Country-Level, Qualitative Data For 2020 Expose The Covid-19 Status In Sri Lanka

JANUARY 2, 2021

1. A year after Covid-19 emerged, the Sri Lanka country statistics and data for year 2020 indicate that Covid-19 is milder than seasonal influenza, as is the case in other tropical countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh or Tanzania. The number of deaths due to Covid-19 and related co-morbidities in 2020 in Sri Lanka was 204, although in a normal year between 4,000 and 6000 people die of influenza co-morbidities annually in Sri Lanka[1].

2. Yet, economically, socially and politically devastating Curfews and isolation policies have been introduced, resulting in fear, isolation, increasing poverty, inequality and pushing the island into a bigger debt trap and forcing the Government to sell off strategic assets and seemingly give tax relief to various international companies, investors and airlines

3. We draw your attention to the empirical and qualitative data and facts on the ground at this time: No workers in the mercantile and industrial sectors in Sri Lanka have died of Covid-19 throughout the year 2020.  Likewise, although the Corona virus has spread throughout the country no nurses, doctors, Public Health Inspectors (PHIs) or other “frontline health workers” in quarantine centers have died of Covid 19, indicating that the severity of the disease is limited in Sri Lanka. More health sector workers die of dengue, heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, road accidents, even elephant attacks etc. There were fewer patients in hospitals than in previous years. 

4. The relatively low incidence of Covid-19 in Sri Lanka is due to several interrelated, and country-specific, CONTEXTUAL factors such as, a) year round hot and humid tropical weather (above 20 degrees Celsius), that degrades the Covid-19 virus and transmission, 2) universal Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG), vaccination that confers innate and trained immunity against respiratory illnesses, since 1949[2],  3) good national health infrastructure including BCG monitoring;, 4) and local diet and food habits etc. and NOT as some misled and ill-informed doctors (who promote the strange “hammer and dance” theory to control the virus), claim, due to the economically destructive militarized lockdowns, isolation, and fear psychosis policies that they promote;

5. Moreover, many international scientists have exposed the fact that high numbers of false positive PRC and RT-PCT tests account for high rates of supposedly asymptomatic cases, and question the Covid-19 data presented by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Data Base. In India highly flawed PCR tests gave up to 80 percent false positives and a community survey was abandoned. The flawed tests account for very high numbers of apparently “asymptomatic” cases when in fact these cases either have Covid-anti-bodies from last year’s flu or the tests were simply wrong. Clearly, Sri Lanka and many other impoverished countries in the GLOBAL SOUTH has been locked down and economically devastated based on flawed tests and a global media narrative that exaggerated the number of Covid-19 cases by giving false positives that lead to misleading data and policy[3].

6. It is now clear that the virus has spread to all parts of the country with 35,300 people infected, but the disease has little traction in Sri Lanka. As leading experts have noted the metric that matters to determine the severity of a disease is NOT the number of infections but rather the number of death relative to infections, extrapolated to the whole population[4]. The MOH and GMOA guided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has used questionable epidemiology models, metrics and flawed PCT tests to whip up a fear psychosis and lock down the country by using the case fertility rate (CFR) rather than use the tried and tested “infection fatality rate” (IFR).

7. At this time we applaud President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for refusing to lock down the country when the WHO, some officials at the Ministry of Health MOH and medical and doctor’s organizations like the GMOA are spreading fear about a “second wave’ of Coronavirus and the new strand emerging in Britain. However, we note with concern, that a foreign citizen heads the Covid-19 Task Force and seems to be making Covid-19 policy in Sri Lanka based on US and UK stories, data and statistics!

8. We also note with concern that the MOH and GMOA and Covid-19 Task Force policy of lockdowns and isolation based on random PCR and antigen tests, that deliver high levels of false positives while targeting poor communities and neighbourhoods with ethnic minorities, and using the military has spread a fear psychosis, stigmatizing patients, particularly women and garment factory workers, and resulted in closure of factories, destruction of livelihood and thousands of job losses, leading to rising poverty and inequality. Often this racial and religious profiling and scapegoating is based on false positive PCR tests, and meant to promote division, distrust and de-stabilize society and government.

9. It is not Covid-19 but the policy response that has triggered a national emergency: The GMOA promoted canard that dead bodies carry and spread the infection has whipped up a media frenzy, and targets Muslim and Christian religious minorities which tend to bury their dead. There appears to be a deliberate attempt to DIVIDE and DISTRACT from a science and evidence based national Covid-19 policy discussion of the real data, empirical facts and qualitative, social science date on the ground. One year after the Covid the QUALITATIVE DATA makes this very clear.

10. “Test, test and trace”, often with flawed tests has been the mantra on which the WHO, Ministry of Health (MOH), the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) policy of economically, socially and politically, devastating lockdowns and isolation has been implemented by the GoSL and military. These policies are clearly NOT based on Sri Lanka’s country specific, quantitative and qualitative Covid-19 data, and are counter-productive to the mental and physical health and well-being of the population. In fact, these policies have turned science and common sense on their heads and caused great damage to society, economy and democratic governance as the OXFAM Report “Hunger Virus” affirms.

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