‘Don’t care’ attitude frightens me

This morning I walked to the Standard Chartered ATM in Banani to draw cash but was redirected to the one in the Unimart building in Gulshan-2. The traffic was like a normal Friday, no evidence of shutdown. Perhaps the rich car owners, often driving fast on the wrong side of the roads, believe that they are immune to the COVID19 virus. All the non-essential shops remain closed but the public are acting as if they want a disaster to happen.

The police check post on the Kemal Ataturk Avenue was dealing with a long queue of vehicles coming from the Airport Road. The police were turning some cars back but the check post for vehicles on Gulshan Avenue coming from Kala Chandpur or Baridhara DOHS side were not being checked at all. However, I have heard that where the troops are present a lot of restrictions are being ordered such as only one passenger in a CNG or Easybike. Across all check posts there must be consistency otherwise it is all a waste of time.

A number of educated Bangladeshis have been speaking like US President Donald Trump did in March this year, i.e. the virus will miraculously vanish. Despite reports to the contrary, some people are convinced that COVID19 is not fatal. Also, when I pointed out that some Middle-East Muslim countries have closed mosques nobody could tell me why the government has not ordered mosques to be completely closed in Bangladesh. I have, after all, been told that Muhammad (PBUH) in one of the Hadiths has said there are certain occasions when prayers can be offered at home and in another Hadith he said that during a plague epidemic you should stay at home. The Islamic Foundation and the Imams should make this very clear before the weekly Friday Jumma prayers. At a mosque in Kuwait from the middle of March, a muezzin instead of calling "hayya alas-salah" (come to prayer), he tells the faithful "as-salatu fi buyutikum" (pray in your homes). The Islamic Foundation will also need to give some guidance regarding religious activities at the time of Ramadan which begins, I believe, on April 23.

And Unimart is where foreigners and rich Bangladeshis go and although Unimart has placed hand sanitisers in different places, there are notices at the check-outs asking customers to keep 3 feet away from others. Why are they not following the WHO and government advice to keep 6 feet away? This is just carelessness and incompetence and this sort of carelessness can cause death.

I write these few words with a certain amount of anger and emotion. My son, a doctor in the UK, has just recovered from COVID-19 and is back at work and his brother, who has a severe learning disability, is in an adult care home in London which is a location where residents and their caregivers are at risk. Some experts are of the opinion that there is a disaster waiting to happen in Bangladesh. The way some people are showing a "Don't care" attitude frightens me. Certainly, people in this part of Dhaka are not staying at home which a very sad state of affairs.