Getting the Signalling Right

When faced with uncertainty, there are similarities in human responses to crises that are personal and collective; both rest in trust. But I want to hold-off on saying the C-word for as long as I can. Instead, I’ll start with the Greek root word, krisis, or “a turning point in a disease”; intense enough to either cause recovery or death — every crisis begins with shock.

Early last year, my grandmother fell and broke her left hip. She passed away shortly afterward. In the following week, there was a heavy downpour. That night, my best friend happened to be in the passenger seat of a car that flipped on its head and toppled into a ditch full of rainwater. The events resulted in a personal crisis of sorts, followed by feelings of overwhelming (un)certainty.

I’ve considered the events in more ways than I can remember. At some points, I chose to look at the details that made sense to me. Medication was administered to my grandmother before her surgery (did that accelerate her decline?). No, she had advanced Alzheimer’s [fact]. At other points, I was so consumed with making sense of the facts, that I felt myself teetering towards some sort of emotional breakdown. An ambulance arrived at the scene of the crash that night (could it have arrived sooner?). Rain water. Rain water. Rain water in a ditch? One day last year, I even held a forefinger up to the sky and boomed, “Shouldn’t You be a fact?”

That’s the thing with facts, they’re supposed to be truths; non-interpretations of events, and yet they’re thrown around so carelessly that sometimes you doubt they even exist. But the only fact that withstands is that it happened— crisis happened.

At some after-the-fact point, I realised I had to accept that I was dealing with events that were (and continue to) make no sense to my cognitive abilities. I found myself acutely aware of my own reactions: grief, guilt, blame, anger and occasional apathy. I could trust the patterns. And whether personal or systemic, the crux of crisis management rests in the reliability and acceptance of a truth. Today, I’m teetering again, except it feels collective. There’s mistrust at every level of society.

Let’s start with the scientists. Many of us have been schooled to cite the evidence produced by scientists when endeavouring to produce pieces of academic work that aspire to factuality, or at the very least, that are passable. They [the scientists] are unable to give us clear and reconcilable answers about how Covid-19 (I said the C-word) is transmitted; about which part of the body it attacks [just as terrorists do]; about how a coronavirus mutation is taking hold of a particular blood type, or about how reliable an antibody test is. By fielding policies built upon assumptions, our scientists are behaving like economists. And is a fact still a fact if it’s cited by an economist?

Then we have the information platforms that are exploding with headlines about infections and death counts alongside bankruptcies, stock market crashes and a big fat bundle of different national policies that serve to create informed consumers.

At the top of the food-chain are the global institutions, gatekeepers of reliable information and silver linings. But they are also the ones who tell us that silver linings are just tricks of light. For example, I got at least seven WhatsApp forwards (not fact- checked because how would that work) when the WHO announced that it is “very rare” for asymptomatic people to spread coronavirus. Only one person followed up with a corrected message that the WHO has retracted its statement; there is not nearly enough evidence to suggest that asymptomatic people are not contagious. This might explain why the Pakistani government is effectively disregarding this statement: “WHO strongly recommends the two weeks off and two weeks on strategy as it offers the smallest curve.”

It also doesn’t seem to matter that the Pakistani government locked-down for weeks in an effort to fortify healthcare capacities, including building a 10,000 bed facility without oxygen cylinders. Traditionally, amongst those belonging to Karachi’s population of 22 million, the able consumer could “get a bed” in one of the 22 hospitals around, of which 6 arguably meet basic health standards. Now, even the able consumer is at the mercy of a healthcare system that is crippling under the weight of “no more beds”. The able consumer is forced out of the market.

In this scenario, what the government (historically the regulator of failed market forces) seems to be signalling is that the economy of this overpopulated state, is considerably more valuable than the welfare of its citizens when discounted for the future [insert neoliberal economics].

If we are to go one step further, into the home of the consumer and civilian, and pretend that we are seeing a human being (God forbid!), might we ask: what happens when a trust deficit runs deeper than skin? Ask anyone on a grocery run. It becomes the leery look you get if you are unlucky enough to cough while in an aisle. Or ask yourself. It’s in the seasonal fever that was just an allergy last year, but that’s become the sounding alarm of the unsuspecting intruder who might be taking over your body without you even knowing it. Can we trust ourselves? And if we can’t trust ourselves or those around us, where do we go? Our social security system? Government? Or those trusty men in green?

Instead, we’re faced with a strange situation of role- reversal, in which government policy appears to be one of trusting its people despite the fact that two months ago 150,000 members of a religious group rejected national guidelines, causing a sharp spike in the infection. To give us confidence, we have the paternalistic and deeply reassuring voice of our Prime Minister, who is “disappointed to see that our nation is being very careless” and who finds comparisons between Pakistan and New Zealand’s crisis response unfair (and justifiably so).

In a nation marked by a history of deep mistrust in government (again, justifiably so), it is difficult - perhaps suspicious - that its figureheads have effectively thrown 220 million people into a de facto system of herd immunity. And though the government hasn’t cited the example of Sweden, a country that has clearly signalled (and is showing weaknesses) in their experiment of herd immunity, this government is none the wiser. In fact, Pakistan has six beds per 10,000 people and an average household size of about 7 people, while Sweden has 2.6 beds and 2 people per household.

So while our Prime Minister confidently draws on how the United States has lifted lockdown for economic reasons, while cautioning against distorted comparisons with stronger economies, there’s no better time for this government to start rebuilding trust and offering citizens some respite amidst this landscape of upheavals within and outside.

It would also serve the signallers in this system, whoever they may be, to consider the civilians whose psyche has been built on the promise of nuclear deterrence for defence. Harping on about India while coronavirus rips through households with more than flu-like symptoms, does nothing to distract those who feel tragically unarmed against “the invisible enemy”.

And though there's no silver bullet in this crisis, the first step might be to acknowledge that there’s a problem. The second is to get the signalling right. And if neither happens and there’s no trust to be found, fellow citizens, be aware of your grief but don’t try and make sense of it.