Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: Confronting the Corona War

The Egyptian government is making great efforts and taking many balanced and escalating measures to deal with the coronavirus crisis and its various dimensions on all levels. However, the movement of citizens in the street reflects the extent of the culture of dealing with the risks of infection and the spread of the coronavirus, and the extent of compliance with advice, measures, decisions and the rule of law, which points to the need to reconsider the speed of imposing the rule of law to protect national security. We have previously written that the coronavirus is not a hidden ghost, and that the preventive measures followed by the citizen and personal and public hygiene are the cornerstone in confronting it and limiting its spread, based on the opinion of many specialist doctors. But this does not mean that our daily behavior should disregard everything we hear and see in the news and images, whether on the radio or satellite channels or from scholars and religious figures or from intellectuals and the general public, about the measures taken by the state and other states to protect citizens from this danger. The World Health Organization's announcement that corona has become a global pandemic means that it has become a war requiring the mobilization of the energies of the national forces for self-defense in this war. The Chinese administration is a model to be followed in confronting this virus, which it considered a war against it before the Health Organization considered it so; it took the initiative to devote all national efforts and forces, including military forces, to carrying out the measures it set to achieve victory and remove the danger from its citizens with the fewest possible losses — at a time when we see the infection spreading in most countries of the world and everyone gripped by a state of fear and panic whose repercussions and effects on various societies are no less than the effects of infection with the virus itself. That is why the countries of the world, including Egypt, have announced measures to reduce mixing, but these range from state to state between soft and strict measures, such as some European countries telling their citizens to follow a policy of isolation at home in case of infection without going to hospitals, considering it a general epidemic that may reach all members of the population. The rate of recovery from infection may far exceed the death rate worldwide, but the rapid increase in rates of infection with the coronavirus, the rapid spread of corona's electronic symptoms and rumors, and the accompanying behaviors and policies of both citizens and governments may result in various scattered crises with dire consequences as long as they are under the influence of a collective mind overshadowed by fear and panic. Therefore, dealing with the danger of the fast-spreading corona as a war, like the Chinese model, is the most successful approach among the countries of the world; it also moves us from the approach of dealing with a crisis to using all means and methods to confront the corona war. We are not stirring up fear or spreading panic among citizens; rather, the speed with which the infection spreads and its effects on the peoples of the world require the swift adoption of strict measures, including the possibility of clearing the streets of passers-by and imposing a curfew in some or all areas if necessary, while announcing to all that the isolation of the infected will be at home, with the possibility of applying immediate fines and sentences, as the Emergency Law provides, against those who violate the strategies and decisions issued by the National Security Council to achieve the country's security and confront disasters of all kinds before infections worsen. The people who found someone to show them compassion and protect them from the danger of the Brotherhood and terrorism must comply with and bear all the strict and harsh measures the government may issue to protect them from the danger of the corona attack. And if the virus should hasten to infect one of us before this article is published, we must defeat it with science, faith and the ability of Egyptians.