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Min Aung Hlaing’s energy seize made Myanmar’s COVID-19 Delta outbreak in mid-2021 even worse. Navy medical doctors shouldn’t be given a global platform to say credit score for holding the virus.
Regime propaganda is available in many varieties. Its crudeness normally makes it straightforward to identify, however on uncommon events it may be extra refined.
In a single latest instance, pro-regime bias was seemingly too delicate for the editors at a prestigious educational journal, BMC Tropical Medication and Well being.
A letter to the editor printed within the journal on March 11 claimed that “well timed containment measures carried out by the federal government have been vital to cut back the transmission as noticed within the third wave of COVID-19 epidemic in Myanmar”.
The authors of the letter failed to say that the “authorities” in query was an illegitimate army regime. There was no reference both to the February 1, 2021, army coup that toppled the democratically elected Nationwide League for Democracy authorities.
Myanmar was already ill-equipped for the Delta wave, however in a variety of the way the army energy seize additional weakened its skill to answer the virus.
Within the instant aftermath of Min Aung Hlaing’s energy seize, tens of hundreds of medical workers went on strike, refusing to work beneath a army regime. When the wave hit, hospitals had few workers to look after sufferers, and plenty of have been turned away.
Equally, lots of the volunteers who had performed such an integral position in the course of the first and second waves have been unwilling to cooperate with the regime. Donations to the general public well being response dried up. The coup additionally disrupted Myanmar’s vaccination drive previous to Delta’s arrival. The regime then cracked down on volunteer teams of putting medical doctors making an attempt to assist these sick with the virus, and requisitioned treasured provides of oxygen for state well being services.
None of this context is talked about within the letter. Nevertheless it’s not prefer it was a secret: all of the editors of BMC Tropical Medication and Well being needed to do was spend 5 minutes on Google.
The authors of the piece declare that the “keep at house” orders issued by the regime’s Ministry of Well being have been efficient in serving to to include the virus.
They cite the ministry’s information for confirmed circumstances and deaths, and Google COVID-19 Neighborhood Mobility Experiences as proof.
However the ministry’s information is wholly unreliable. Many individuals who have been contaminated examined themselves at house, with out going to a authorities facility, and most have been by no means examined in any respect. This was clear from a graph within the piece, which confirmed that testing was very low in the course of the outbreak and solely elevated in September, after the outbreak had handed.
Tragically, lots of of hundreds of individuals possible died in their very own houses resulting from a scarcity of obtainable medical care. Most of those circumstances or deaths weren’t counted.
This isn’t hyperbole. By evaluating reported COVID-19 deaths with burial figures, Frontier has beforehand proven that there have been greater than 30,000 extra deaths in Yangon in July and August 2021 – virtually 10 instances the official quantity.
Whereas the regime was busy claiming “success” for is COVID response, the kinfolk of those 30,000 folks have been mourning the lack of family members – at the very least a few of whom died as a result of the army coup left Myanmar so poorly ready.
The disingenuousness of the authors can also be clear from the actual fact they cite faculty closures as one of many “authorities adopted containment measures” that supposedly helped to cease the virus. Sure, the regime closed colleges in response to Delta, however barely 10 % of the scholar inhabitants was attending courses anyway, due to the mass boycott of the junta’s “slave schooling” system.
Google’s mobility information does certainly present a decline shortly after stay-at-home orders have been launched, however this could not suggest causation. To their credit score, the authors concede that the decline in inhabitants motion exterior the house could not solely be resulting from “excessive enforcement of the restrictions by the federal government”, but additionally that “concern in regards to the severity of illnesses may scale back the mobility of individuals”.
Take it from those that have been there: folks stopped going out for a easy purpose – as a result of they have been sick themselves, taking good care of members of the family, or frightened of catching the virus at a time when the well being system had collapsed.
The fortunate few who escaped an infection did so by remaining at house of their very own accord, not as a result of the regime instructed them to. Case numbers went down solely when herd immunity was reached, and there have been few folks left to contaminate.
The narrative that the regime’s containment measures labored additionally makes little sense when analysis has proven that one of many most vital components in a profitable pandemic response is belief within the authorities. Belief isn’t one thing usually related to a army regime that involves energy illegally by toppling a well-liked administration, deploys lethal violence in opposition to unarmed protesters after which makes use of each tactic conceivable (and a few unimaginable) to brutalise a inhabitants into submission.
How this escaped the editors at BMC Tropical Medication and Well being is baffling.
The article is a letter to the editor, which the publication describes as “a short report that’s throughout the journal’s scope and of specific curiosity to the group, however not appropriate as a typical analysis article”. Not each printed letter is peer reviewed – it’s on the editors’ discretion, the journal says. However that’s no excuse for publishing an article clearly designed to downplay the devastating outbreak and promote an illegitimate regime.
If nothing else, what ought to have alerted the journal’s editors that one thing was amiss was the affiliation of the authors. 13 of the 17 co-authors work at army services, together with the Defence Companies Medical Academy in Mingaladon, the 500-bed army hospital in Meiktila, and the Defence Companies Medical College in Hmawbi. The 4 remaining co-authors are from the Ministry of Well being, now firmly beneath regime management.
Whereas letters to the editor are usually not at all times peer reviewed, the authors should declare any competing pursuits. The journal says a non-financial competing curiosity may very well be political, private, spiritual, ideological, educational or mental. Not one of the authors declared any competing curiosity, regardless of the importance of their affiliation with the army.
The letter is a warped retelling of Myanmar’s Delta wave – one which bears little semblance to actuality, however fits the agenda of the regime. It ought to by no means have been printed in a prestigious educational journal, and disrespects the many individuals who misplaced their lives throughout Myanmar’s significantly under-reported lethal Delta wave.
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