Hate Leads to the Dark Side
Booze boost booted, more virulent virus variant found, cold contact cases
Hi folks, it has been a colorful week filled with controversial statements and decisions: from a president urging citizens to hate foreign products to police deciding to charge the dead and an admission that the new Covid-19 strain everyone’s been panicking about has finally been detected here.
Hate Speech
“Don’t just love domestically made products, hate foreign made ones”, President Jokowi said in a speech on Thursday (Mar 4) to kick off a Trade Ministry meeting. He later called the ministry to “defend, protect, and empower” local small and medium businesses (SMBs) from global competitors and even want local SMBs to be featured prominently at shopping malls and leave International brands at “non-strategic places”.
The speech created a storm of criticisms online, with some social media users pointing out how the first family don’t seem to hate foreign products themselves. Meanwhile some media outlets highlighted the fact that Jokowi has been rolling out the red carpet for foreign investors and businesses to set up their operations here.
Trade Minister M. Lutfi has claimed responsibility for the President’s call, saying that the speech came after he presented a report that shows predatory pricing from foreign-based retailers which violates WTO regulations and kills off local products.
Meanwhile, Jokowi seemed to be confused why his speech was deemed controversial. “It’s alright not to like foreign products. Why so much squabble about me calling to hate foreign products?” We hear you Mr President. We hear you.
No Foreign Booze Dollars Please
That’s not the only controversy related to the president. Last month, Jokowi signed a presidential decree, the addendum of which opened the tap for investments on the production of alcoholic drinks. In a nutshell, the addendum said that investors can immediately put their money in alcoholic manufacturers based in non-Muslim majority provinces like Papua and Bali. Outside of those provinces, it will be up to the local Investment Coordination Boards (BKPM) with recommendations from the governor.
Naturally, this upset virtually every Islamic body in the country. On Tuesday (Mar 2), Jokowi announced that he has repealed that addendum “after receiving many inputs from clerics… religious leaders, and inputs from provinces and regions.”
Dead FPI charged
The Detective Office of the National Police named the six dead members of the FPI involved in the toll road shooting on 7 December last year as suspects. Two of them were killed during an exchange of bullets on the road while four were shot after they were arrested. The six were charged with assaulting the police with deadly weapons. However, after the case files were reviewed by the prosecutor’s office, they ended up dismissing the case altogether, negating the need for suspects to be investigated.
Nevermind the fact that they would have needed to bring the dead back to life for interrogations, the actual incident itself remains under a cloud of mystery as to what actually happened, since the only evidence they’ve presented thus far were audio recordings of calls between the FPI members and testimonies of the police involved in the shooting.
New Strain Detected
Deputy Health Minister Dr. Dante Saksono announced that the B117 variant of the coronavirus which is more virulent or easier to spread, has been detected in indonesia in two cases. The two cases with B117 apparently were Indonesians who arrived from Saudi Arabia and according to West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil, the strain was found from samples taken in Karawang, east of Jakarta.
Everyone’s favorite epidemiologist Dr. Pandu Riono has this to say: Isn’t the government supposed to quarantine people coming back from abroad and let them walk free after they tested negative?
Meanwhile, Health Minister Budi G. Sadikin said that there may be two reasons why the new strain only appeared now. Either: “God loves this country” or we just found out that they’re here already. Well, you tell us Mr Minister… which one is it?
Boosting the Vax Rate
Health Minister Budi G. Sadikin said the government will start vaccinating 500k people/day some time in March/April and 1 million people per day from June as more vaccines arrive. He admitted that the vax rate has been low, arguing that the government is mindful of the stock we have today.
The President however, said that the daily average needs to reach 1 million per day to complete the vaccination drive in 12 months. The math checks out, if we manage to vaccinate 1 million people per day from June 1, we’ll surpass 181.5 million people weeks before the end of the year. And that’s a big if, counting on the expectation that the supply of vaccines will be much more plentiful from July 2021.
While the vaccination rate had been slow, there are encouraging signs with daily vaccinations finally crossing over the required 330,000 people per day for first receivers today, with a total of 2,888,757 since 13 January. The daily average for the past week is 171,005. There’s going to be some major vax drive over the next several weeks to reach the new daily target.
More Work for Us
The Covid-19 task force has been under pressure to conduct at least 30 contact tracing for every positive patient. For the past one week, the number of new cases have fluctuated between 5,000 and 7,000 which means they would have needed to test between 150,000 to 210,000 people a day. The task force said they want to use rapid antigen test for that purpose. And we’re cool with that.
What we’re not cool about is that starting this week, the Covid-19 task force began including antigen test results into the daily update. The thing is… rapid tests are not the definitive tool to determine if a patient is positive for Covid-19 or not. You have RT-PCR and TCM for that. (We’re not gonna tell you what they stand for. Google it!) That’s how we count the day’s positive rate. That’s how we should be measuring our testing capabilities.
So for the past few days, we have to deduct the number of tests they performed minus the number of antigen tests. Only then, can we get an accurate picture of how well this government is dealing with this pandemic.
As for contact tracing itself, currently the task force have only been able to contact trace 5-10 people per positive case, far below the required quota, because most patients refuse to be traced and from the few who gave permission, most of their contacts refused to be tested. If you’re reading this, do us all a favor and please tell people that testing from contact tracing is necessary to discover and isolate cases. It’s for theirs and everyone’s well being.
Until Next Week
Catch y’all in the next edition, hopefully with better news. Give us a follow on Twitter or subscribe to this Nuiceletter if you haven’t, share it to your friends if you love what we do, and send us feedback if you have any. Have a safe week, mask up and maintain a distance if you have to meet people.
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