From Mudik to India, the Government Has Never Learnt the Covid Lessons at the Borders
Faced with the covid challenges at the borders, the government falter yet again.
This past two weeks, Indonesia has faced two important covid challenges at the borders, both to the outside world and between states domestically. First, they have been scrambling to restrict people from going to their hometowns — called ‘Mudik’ here — trying not to repeat the same mistake as last year. Then, more than one hundred citizens of India — a country recording 300,000 plus cases a day just recently, with its own virus variant— have somehow passed the borders and arrived in Jakarta, via commercial flight, with ease.
To overcome that, here are their responses. For mudik, a complete ban is introduced a week before and on the day of Eid al-Fitr, with strict requirements complimenting it days before and after. For the Indians, they have found 12 of them infected and isolated them immediately. So far so good, right? It’s been a good effort from them, I admit that. But dig a bit deeper, and you’ll come to the same conclusion as mine: That is not enough.
When it comes to mudik, it is true they’re making it difficult for people to travel before the ban starts and after it ends. However, no matter how you look at it, it’s still not a complete ban. People were smart enough last year finding the loopholes and travel anyway. Making the matter worse, the requirements are heavily focused on travelling on the ground and sea. While already heavily restricted, flying can be exactly that loophole.
It doesn’t stop there. The government, so far, haven’t been clear whether travels involving tourists, both domestically and internationally, are also subject to the new restrictions and the ban. Right now, it is as if the government are making the mudik crowd the ‘black sheep’ in a way. To add insult to injury, they have paradoxically reduced the price of antigen covid test in many gateways and relaxed the requirements from PCR-only to PCR or antigen in some destinations. The timing is just perplexing.
Meanwhile, about the Indians, the government reportedly found those already infected only after they had dispersed into multiple hotels throughout the city. Who got where, only God can tell. Isolating the 12 won’t solve the issues when they might have unknowingly spread the virus to even more people, with the government seemingly not care enough to do further and more thorough tracing, if they care at all.
And of course, there’s this nagging border issue. We actually had a form of international travel ban earlier this year to prevent the spread of the new variants. Yet somehow, the government decided to lift it in late March, replacing it with stricter requirements instead. They naively believe that making it difficult for them to come here, instead of banning them altogether, would give a balanced approach between handling the virus and allowing some travel to happen. Well, those Indians will tell you otherwise.
These two latest ‘spectacles’ have really underscored one thing: The government have simply never learnt their lessons at the borders in this pandemic. Exactly what’s wrong here is that they’ve always been ‘reactive’ rather than ‘preventive’. They always insist on letting the show go on, monitoring the ‘culprits’ at the borders only once they arrive, but then always respond to that inadequately. Not serious enough in testing, not willing enough to isolate, not tough enough to send people back. Just not enough.
Despite that, they have been really blind not to see their incompetence and never had the courage to take the plunge and actually close the borders for good. That is, they should do the ‘preventive’ part, literally not letting the culprits to even arrive in the first place. And I’m not talking about half-heartedly closing them like earlier this year, or last year, but closing them precisely at the right moment, only making exceptions for frontline jobs or emergency needs, patiently taking their time, and only opening them up again when the time — scientifically — is right.
Closing them down is especially critical now that our country has passed the point where we couldn’t afford another lockdown. That ship has sailed. The infection rate has gone too high, and people won’t welcome it either, anyway. There’s also new dangerous variants to think about. Some even have arrived here already. This is the government’s last gasp in their already depleting arsenal if they actually want to make a big leap against the virus.
Of course, there’s economic factors — mainly tourism — that keep haunting us. But sooner or later the government have to come around to the stupidly simple logic that covid comes first, then the economy, not backwards. According to a journal from Bappenas, tourism only accounts for roughly 4–5 percent of our GDP anyway. This equals to around 100 trillion Rupiahs per year. Guess what? The total budget for covid has ballooned to more than 1,000 trillion Rupiahs now due to how worse it has become. Maybe, they’re just a bunch of stupidly simple politicians after all.
In the end, it’s probably just up to us. So, do whatever you need to do to tackle the virus yourself. Don’t miss your parents in the hometown too much. Just call them or send loads of letters. Don’t be too selfish to cross off your bucket lists now. Just save up and wait for even bigger adventures. Lastly, don’t even bother believing what the government do and say. Just stay home, will you?
