We never cry for someone we have never met but sorrow intensified earlier this week when the Covid-19 death toll in Malaysia hit 300.
We think of the two one-year-old babies who died recently with wet eyes.
Our hearts ache when the infants, a girl and a boy from Semporna and Sandakan respectively, remain nameless and faceless.
The first Covid-19 child mortality in the country on Oct 5 is a grim statistic: Baby girl, 140th death, patient 12,432.
The baby boy who died on Nov 9 is the 290th death, case number 31,272.
The remaining victims have also been reduced to statistics, raising questions whether they should be respectably remembered.
In a period of anxiety and panic, it would be an important public service to respect the victims, comfort their families, and to help the public to fully understand the human toll of this health crisis.
Have people accepted the fatalities as sheer data or are they keen to have stories of the dead widely reported in the media?
Are people upset that there is no collective grief for victims of the coronavirus?
Since the outbreak of the virus in Malaysia, the public has only been exposed to the hard facts, top down approach to containing the spread.
Using the soft, emotional storytelling approach might further help raise awareness about the disease and address ignorance.
It could also debunk the ‘it won’t happen to me’ attitude which is a major problem.
People who behave with a sense of invincibility should be jolted and constantly reminded to get serious.
No none can tell a better story that ‘it can happen to anyone’ than the loved ones of victims – ‘we have suffered a loss; we don’t want you to suffer too’ sort of message.
No public relations person can spin such grief to make it sound positive even if the deceased are in a place where love and feeling good doesn’t cost a thing.
While privacy concerns are keeping the authorities from revealing the identities of the dead, ideally no death should be anonymous.
Or are some saying:
- Why obsess over or be shocked by the loss of lives, especially when it comes to strangers?
- Isn’t the coronavirus only one of many causes of preventable deaths?
The shock of the pandemic that has had a profound impact on every Malaysian should forever change us and make us look at each other in different ways.
Loss and pain has cast a pall of unease and we must go forward with love and compassion as though everything depended on it.
Because as we now know, everything does depend on it.
We are fighting Covid-19 together because we not only want people to live, but for people to have long lives.
We pray there’s peace to be found for the dead, those afflicted by the virus, the survivors and their families.
We have to find ours.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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