Reveal pandemic research result

AS the coronavirus pandemic is crashing economies around the world with increasing death tolls reported daily, Papua New Guinea shook it off without a scratch.
There was no serious case or death from the Covid-19 in the land of the unexpected as the situation is now reaching anticlimax.
Why and how this happened are questions crossing minds but the notion of a smart control and preventive strategy by the Government is certainly out of the question for this technology backwater.
Countries affluent and advanced in technology and power have succumbed to the deadly virus.
We miraculously survived a plague of a biblical scale and the answer lies in the report by the East Sepik Governor Allan Bird.
Bird commissioned a research to determine his province encountered the coronavirus before the Government’s testing and control programmes.
A team, comprising of Medical Research Institutes and PHA medical doctors sampled 1,153 people over 10 days in six locations.
Fifty people were detected lgG and lgM positive.
This means 4.3 per cent showed the Covid-19 antibodies.
This may, however, not be a conclusive reflection of the Covid-19 spread in the country but it does tell a story.
Potentially it is a microcosm of what is on the ground and provides a lead for further investigation.
Based on these findings Governor Bird is saying that the Covid-19 passed through our population long before we started testing for it.
This means our people had the Covid-19 and recovered.
Nobody got sick and nobody died from it. This is an important data which deserves to be factored into the Government’s decision making process.
The Covid-19 had passed through Papua New Guinea leaving footprints of antibodies.
The Government’s efforts never contained the sickness in any way and cannot justify the costs.
Its attempts are outrageous and does not equate to the millions of kina spent on speculative control measures.
While it is important to continue observe and maintain healthy practices the restrictions imposed in the “new normal” after the SOE are preposterous and frivolous.
A simple case of this irrationality is the banning of poker and horse racing – an important source of the Government’s revenue – on the premise of social distancing, while allowing people to go watch rugby at the stadiums only to be crammed and packed like sardines.
The Government has to make public its findings in the SOE to justify the actions it is taking.

David Lepi