New Year's Festivities: The Sharp Rise of Corona Graphics and Irony

The New Year's moment for some is symbolic of a new start page. It is celebrated with gratitude with the closest and full of warmth, sometimes also celebrated with barbecue in the backyard. At the same time, the medical personnel who were exhausted after a day of caring for the patients asleep in the limited rest area shared with other medical personnel.

 

Exactly 2 weeks after the turn of the year, the number of positive national corona cases as of January 14 reached 11,557 cases. The highest recorded in daily case records since cases were first recorded in early March last year. These daily cases have also accumulatively continued to increase since 2 days after the turn of the year, indicating that the increase in cases occurred after the New Year with Central Java as the largest contributor to cases.

 

Dwimawan Heru, Head of Jasa Marga's Corporate Communication & Community Development Group, revealed that as many as 150,961 vehicles had left Jakarta on D-2 New Year 2021. An increase of 9.4% compared to normal conditions. The impact of this data is a spike in the red zone which rises to 70 red zones spread across Indonesia as of 10 January.

 

This 'consistent' increase in corona cases is in line with the irony of the policies taken by the government. The government decided to ban crowds and celebrations on New Year's 2021 in public places. This policy is to anticipate an increase in Covid-19 cases after the Christmas and New Year 2020-2021 holidays. The Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan asked for the tightening to be implemented from 18th December 2020 to 8th January 2021.

 

The irony that then arises from this policy is that the graph of cases continues to rise amidst the government's hopes that banning events in public places can lower the case graph. The government forgets an important point that must be underlined is that the prohibition of gathering in public places does not apply to gathering in private places. Because of not a few people 'shift' their events to their private places.

 

Of course, many of these gathering activities in private places are not detected by the government, so that 'regularly' positive daily cases of corona continue to rise. Many aspects can be evaluated by the government to prevent the same thing from happening. One of them is the flow of information that has been carried out by the covid task force with the 'top to bottom' scheme can be changed to 'bottom to top', by sharing the flow of information starting from the smallest apparatus of the community, namely the community association or RT / RW.

 

By integrating the flow of information to reach the grassroots, it is hoped that the public will be able to understand the policies and messages the government wants to convey, with, of course, policies that are not selective towards various social classes because there are still several cases of crowds whose legal handling is still lame.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin predicts a surge in positive cases of Covid-19 after year-end holidays, will occur on January 16-18, 2021. From this phenomenon, of course we have learned a lot, that the safety of the people is number one.

Formulating inappropriate policies can make the people even more burdened  and make the corona case graph rise again, therefore in-depth calculations are needed so that the resulting policies can be useful without having irony to continually sacrifice health workers who are fighting on the front lines.

- Muhammad Faydh At-Tharieq (B0318021)