Tired of this.
These confinement days have taken their toll on our patience, mental stability and because of a spiritual vacuum. The authorities, in their wisdom, have yet again extended our confinement to end June 2021. While we can go shopping and pack our buses with 60 passengers our restaurants, beaches and places of worship remain closed. In reply to the sometimes strange national decisions such as no weddings, a Facebooker wrote in humour that we could organise weddings in buses since 60 passengers are authorised.
In 2020 we could at least have religious services with reduced numbers respecting distancing. However, this year 2021 they banned all gatherings and ensured all places of worship would be shut. I find it disconcerting that the Council of Religions and the Diocese of Port Louis have not protested or even entered into negotiations with the authorities on this matter. Rather they seem to blindly accept fatality in the deprivation of spirituality for its people. Basic human rights can be withdrawn by power exercised through legislation. So it seems that any adherence by a country to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Paradise is a signatory can be swept aside through decreed decision. Ironic that, at this time, we are deprived of Articles 2 and 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
These past long months of confinement, in Paradise, have deprived many religions of their important celebrations. For Christians all of the most important feast days in this year have gone without celebration. The liturgical year has come and gone. Not one special day was celebrated other than through television or through social media transmission. We now have what is an ugly term a virtual reality church where the faithful are reduced to practising in front of a screen in the privacy of their homes. It is clear that belief and faith are not practised solely in private but as part of a community united in their respective places of worship. The Godless secular authority seems to have made it possible to push religious practice out of sight.
The consequences of spiritual deprivation will have its consequences. Already we notice that priests have opened several telephone lines to accommodate pastoral care and prayer for many who are suffering in the pandemic situation. For me, this has been an eye-opener as to how a democratically elected political group can be so callous in their decision-making process. Certainly, the treatment of families who lost loved-ones to Covid was shocking. Imagine your deceased family member being put into a plywood coffin and buried without any ceremony in a cemetery while you watch the bulldozer at work from the gates on the roadside. There was a video on YouTube that showed the distress of a family in this situation. Even though they had offered to buy a decent coffin it was denied. As of writing this any funeral must have police clearance. Not much makes any sense these days and many things are justified by the pandemic situation. The heights of insensitiveness and harshness is an alarming trend.
The plight of the population in Mauritius is shared with communities worldwide, people’s mental health has been affected and cases of depression and anxiety states has soared as a result of consecutive lockdowns!…. The elderly living on their own have had to shield and have been deprived from having any contacts with their loved ones leading to despair and deteriorating existing physical and psychological disorders! Things have improved in the UK after a successful program of vaccination with the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines! We are now slowly coming out of our 2nd lockdown which has been the worst as it was during the winter months! Places of worship, restaurants and pubs are open again with social distancing and hand sanitising stations in strategic places! There is a study about a 3rd booster vaccine to deal with the variants of the virus and it would be given to the population in the autumn! UK citizens can now travel to destinations on the “Green” list which include Portugal, Israel, Australia, Iceland, New Zealand and a few others! People have started to go away on holidays to these countries but they need a negative PCR test done 48 hours before departure! The economic fallout has been felt by most industries and the recovery will be long to get back to previous growth levels! The emergence of variants in different countries will complicate the economic recovery of countries around the world and the answer may well be that the world population will need to have access to the vaccines before the pandemic will be overcome! In the meantime, we have to live with the virus and take the necessary measures and precautions to minimise the spread of this dreadful illness!
Hi Gerard,
I’m not sure what Australia looks like from your perspective in UK. It may well be a “green zone”, but I thought it worth mentioning that you cannot enter the country at will. Australia’s borders are closed. The only people who can travel to Australia are:
– Australian citizens
– permanent residents
– immediate family members
– travellers who have been in New Zealand for at least the 14 days before the date of departure. This does not include the Realm Countries of the Cook Islands and Niue.
There are limits on how many people can come in per week. I think it is around 6000 persons in total. All must enter 14 days hotel quarantine at their own expense. Some people are contracting COVID-19 in hotel quarantine because they are not designed to be air locks, so sometimes when a food delivery is left at two doors at once, side by side, and both occupants open their doors simultaneously, transmission occurs. This happens when someone is positive and does not know it. If they knew they were positive, they either can not board the aircraft, or if known later, are transferred to a different hotel facility reserved for positive cases.
At the moment we have a controversy over permanent residents of Indian descent. So many wished to return at once that there was not capacity in quarantine and there was such a risk of overwhelming our hospitals that the federal government imposed a temporary two week halt on their immigration. It has been lifted now but those people affected are screaming bloody murder. However, if all the 6000 slots were filled from this quarter, that would block out all others, such as Australian citizens returning from the UK.
I’m just glad I’m not in government trying to balance the needs of all affected by the pandemic.
Yes Mike, you’re comments sound about right, not only for Mauritius, but also here in the U.K. and elsewhere.
It will likely be, “not before next Christmas/2-years”, before this Virus is eradicated completely around the world and as long as people are still able to travel across the world’s border with impunity as to the very likely effects of continuing the transmission of this disease.
If only at the outset in December-2019, all those borders were shut completely – until significant quarantine requirements had been put in place, this disease would likely have only lasted for a couple of months.
It is so easy that many people blame the governments, but in reality, it is many of the people themselves who have – through their own selfishness, irresponsibility and ignorance, that in all areas of every-day living etc., are much of the blame…
“Quarantine” was/is the only effective-way of stopping the spread of the various-forms of COVID and this is still not being done..
The various vaccinations themselves cannot and will not stop the spread… That is not their purposes…
Mr.Terry