By Dominic Tham
MALAYSIA’S COVID-19 death toll is now over 700. While our COVID-19 mortality rate is commendable compared with other countries’, it is still one death too many.
Each day, the numbers keep adding up – not just the deaths but the daily new cases which are hovering between 3,000 to over 4,000 daily. In the early days when the coronavirus hit our shores, anything above 100 was already alarming.
And just a few months ago, any reports of new COVID-19 deaths would trigger a dropped jaw. Now, we silently “cheer” if daily new deaths are in the single digit, and not double as it most of the time is.
We have come to accept new daily COVID-19 cases of over 3,000 and high body counts as the “new norm”. Humans have been conditioned to come to terms with shocks over time. It is our evolutionary coping mechanism to ensure we move on after a crisis or trauma.
It’s not just COVID-19 cases that we have become desensitised to. Road accidents is another area where we often see the statistics through a cold lens devoid of emotions. Last year, 418,237 road accidents were reported in Malaysia, involving 4,634 deaths.
That’s more than 12 deaths a day, and more than six times the current death toll caused by COVID-19. The figures are much higher during the festive periods such as during Hari Raya or Chinese New year.
Interestingly, road accidents and fatalities dropped by 26% last year compared with the previous year’s 567,516 cases. Road fatalities also fell by 25% from 6,167 in 2019.
The police have attributed this to less vehicles on the roads due to the pandemic. The travel restrictions have forced many vehicles off the roads, statistically pushing the number of road accidents and fatalities down.
Some have even come to see this as some sort of balancing mechanism i.e. less deaths on the road results in more deaths due to the pandemic. But this brings us back to the point about Malaysians being desensitised to deaths.
Behind every person maimed or death recorded, whether due to road accidents, COVID-19, cancer or other reasons, there’s a human tragedy which statistics would not be able to capture.
Kids could have lost parents, injured workers could have lost jobs, or somebody could be bedridden for the rest of his or her life, bringing much despair to their loved ones.
Until and unless we see COVID-19, road fatalities and other related statistics for what they are – tragic stories – we will not be moved enough to do something about it, like making sure we mask up in public or don’t use phones while driving.
It is time we rid ourselves of the cold, unfeeling lenses from which we look at COVID-19 and other related statistics. Otherwise, we ourselves will one day become a statistic. – Feb 1, 2021
Dominic Tham is a FocusM editorial contributor.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
