When an Economy Fails and a Lockdown De-rails

Locking down a population that resists those efforts is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands, barely half the water survives the journey to your mouth! This is our reality in Lebanon today, a population that refuses to cooperate with its discredited government, from political masters to civil servants all, our government is hollowed out and denuded of all authority but it still exercises considerable power. This wide public refusal to cooperate with government and governance, focuses all public disaffection into a narrow dense beam of revulsion and anger, some directed at government some at the people. The populace seems to be saying to government: “As men and women of peace we cannot challenge your power, but we shall assail your authority wherever we find you trying to assert it!”

 

In the short term, a matter of weeks or months, states of emergency and lockdowns can work to quiet down the boiling angry people, but beyond those weeks and months, no government tool of power can help it avoid the inescapable slippage down the shit smeared slope!

 

Today was my day, plates ending in even numbers, which includes zero apparently, may drive around, and I did just that. I wanted to see for myself how the people were adapting to the new lockdown conditions, I also needed supplies from the supermarket. Although all gathering places where people would normally meet are closed, like cafes and restaurants, people continued to gather anyway along promenades and at street corners.

 

All along Beirut’s Manara district waterfront promenade, families, young and old were walking and interacting with one another freely, joggers were jogging and beggars were begging. Though, all said and done, it wasn't all that crowded. Although the whole promenade was clearly cordoned off with red and green municipal tape, much of it was dislodged and fluttering freely in the breeze as people defiantly strolled under the especially warm November sun on Thursday.

 

When denied places to gather socially, a defiant people can get very creative indeed. Groups of friends gather outside supermarkets, families take their children on their food shopping runs to supermarkets, which have been unusually crowded since lockdown started making it just that much riskier to shop for essentials. Fathers carry their sons upon their shoulders, mothers with young kids in hand congregate in isles chatting with friends and neighbors they meet there. 

 

I do not blame the authorities, it’s an impossible mission, not even a million policemen could or would enforce the lockdown completely. Like all soldiers, they have to pick and choose the battles they can win. Enforcing the license plate rule has been especially successful since it is relatively straight forward to stop and cite errant drivers. The sheer number of citations issued has ensured a descent revenue stream for the public purse from fines collected, revenue that is badly needed in theses straitened times!

 

Less successful however, has been enforcing the rules within multiple household families that gather indoors or out, or enforcing mask wearing and distancing at traditional market places located amidst impoverished communities that have long resisted closing down their trade arguing that they need to remain open in order to feed their families, which is sadly the case for many day workers from taxi drivers to porters and many working in the food and beverage and hospitality sector, like souvenir touts by the waterside promenade. 

The whole country is in an unenviable position, locking down is medically the sound decision to take, in fact it is the only decision if the health care sector is to be saved from utter collapse. But for most of the population, those who are uninfected or who may very well be infected and not know it, the dreaded virus is just a government conspiracy and an excuse to impose more controls over their freedoms and the way they wish to live their lives. 

 

The fact that the government has moved slowly and often acted by decree from on high, instead of taking the people into its confidence and making them willing participants in the general mobilization plan, has meant that what trust the people may have had in certain parts of this government, has long since evaporated as the good intentioned and hard-working few in government are bogged down in politics. A once feted minister of health has since seen his popularity diminish sadly following the “exemptions scandal” during the first lock down and his own home town recording a high number of infections as well mutinous behavior as when the family of a man who died from the virus snatched his corpse from health care workers praying over his body in full PPE and took the body away to wash and prepare it for buriel themselves with no precautions taken. 

 

Sadly, this is our situation as of today, nothing good to write home about, a lot of depressing shit and wide spread collective delusions, speaking of which, the new year prognosticators are loose and peddling their mumbo-jumbo to every desperate willing ear and every TV channel willing to host them.