Help yourself

When native English speakers say help yourself, it means the guest can just feel free to enjoy whatever offered. To the people in Hong Kong, help yourself carries another totally different meaning now when they are facing the recent spike of CONVID 19. They really need to self helping themselves because the HKSAR government is at the brink of collapse on addressing the current surge of over thousands verified cases a day. Not only the public health system is highly overloaded but all kinds of anti-plague measures like the quarantine facility and testing facility as well as home quarantine support services all fall short to demand in a large extent.

As I mentioned my earlier post enough is enough  the reason is due to the absence of contingence plan arising from the lack of foresight, if not the worse case, malfeasance, of Sophia Chan, Secretary of Food and Health, Caspar Tsui, resigned Secretary of Home Affairs Bureau and of course the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam. They are inevitably the culprits of poor management of this spike of plague. Tsui resigned under the blame of his attendance to a birthday party which is a violation of the social distancing policy. However, the other two are still in their positions but most likely their days is numbered. Anyway, no matter what their political future will be, the fact is that the public is the victim of their wrong doings. When the public services are at the brink of collapse, Hong Kong people can only help themselves but not depend on the government.

Despite of the relatively low fatility rate of Omicron but when the infection cases rose, so was the daily death toll which climbed to a couple of dozen in the recent days. As getting infected is not a low probability event, the number one self-helping is to remain survive after infection. Getting vaccinated is the proven measure. Vaccination cannot prevent infection though but remaining alive after infection is the bottom line.

While the bottom line of stay alive by vaccination is secured, the next self-helping is to avoid getting infected. Naturally wearing face mask is the basic and mandatory step. However, as far as observation reveals that many people do not pay enough attention on their hand hygiene. Many passengers in the public transportation still grab the handrail with their bare hands. Shoppers also pick up merchandise with bare hands as well. No doubt many people carry a bottle of hand sanitizer but the point is that in most of the time they did not clean their hands in time after each and every touching with these objects. Those objects could be contaminated and very likely they would touch their own belongings afterward thus spreaded the virus onto their belongings. When they touched their nose, eyes or mouth unconsciously right after toughing these contaminated belongings thus be infected. Wearing disposable plastic gloves before touching these objects seems to be paramount. This helps avoiding infection in the first place.

For those unfortunately already infected, depending on the level of symptoms, self-helping is also more practical than seeking medical services from the public health system. There are already numerious cases that those verified infected being stranded at home awaiting for hospitalization or quarantine. Those patients with mild symptoms as long as they have already received their jabs do not need to panic because the fatility rate on the vaccinated is quite low. Most likely most patients will get well even if without medical treatment. Sleeping in open area in the chill nights awaiting for hospitalization could bring more risk exposure than can the disease per se be. Let alone the public health system is extremely overloaded so reserving the capacity for those truly endangered not only help ease the overloading but save one self by avoiding possible cross-infection in the hospital.

Naturally despite reducing social contacts, avoid visiting unnecessary premises sounds like platique but are truly practical self-helping measures. When the government fails their job to protect us, self helping yourself seems paramount than ever.