There was re­joic­ing in sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety yes­ter­day with the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) im­ple­ment­ed to help curb COVID-19’s spread with­in the pop­u­la­tion is to be lift­ed on Wednes­day, weeks ear­li­er than sched­uled.

No doubt, the busi­ness and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors were most re­lieved since it will mean they can re­turn to full op­er­a­tions with staff able to re­turn to du­ties with no forced time re­stric­tions.

Of course, the Prime Min­is­ter’s promise that there will be no fur­ther shut­downs of the econ­o­my was per­haps the best news for some. In­deed, in giv­ing some ex­am­ples of his re­cent trav­el to the Unit­ed King­dom, the Prime Min­is­ter in­ti­mat­ed that the best way for­ward is to learn to live with the virus be­cause it is here to stay; not­ing too that to shut down one as­pect of the lifeblood of the econ­o­my on­ly shoots the coun­try in its foot.

The Prime Min­is­ter is cor­rect in his as­ser­tion but there are good rea­sons for this too.

Every coun­try that has at­tempt­ed lock­downs as a means of staving off the spread of the virus has had to al­ter them be­cause sci­en­tists have so far been un­able to de­ter­mine the ex­act be­hav­iour pat­terns of COVID-19. This un­pre­dictabil­i­ty is what has re­sult­ed in sci­en­tists so far be­ing un­able to find a cure but that, of course, could take decades.

So the Gov­ern­ment is per­haps right to dis­con­tin­ue the SoE to al­low cit­i­zens their right to free­dom of move­ment.

This, how­ev­er, presents a new clear and present dan­ger — which ex­ist­ed even with the SoE in ef­fect. That dan­ger is the bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

In re­mov­ing the SoE, which some sec­tors agree helped keep the num­bers down, cit­i­zens are now in con­trol of their des­tinies as far as staving off the virus is con­cerned.

From what the Prime Min­is­ter and Health Min­is­ter de­tailed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, it is an up­hill bat­tle.

There were an as­tound­ing 22 more deaths and 403 new cas­es re­port­ed yes­ter­day, clear­ly in­di­cat­ing that so­ci­ety is far off from mak­ing the dis­ci­plined life changes nec­es­sary to keep the virus away.

More dis­turbing­ly, it was re­vealed that some pri­vate med­ical ex­perts are part of the prob­lem. Ap­par­ent­ly, they have been treat­ing in­fect­ed per­sons with oth­er forms of med­ica­tion, in­clud­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Iver­mectin, in­stead of di­rect­ing them to hos­pi­tals. Days lat­er, these same in­di­vid­u­als end up at this same in­sti­tu­tion but in some cas­es, it is too late to save them. Then some are al­so re­fus­ing to be tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. The 600,000 peo­ple who to this day refuse to take vac­cines — cur­rent­ly the on­ly true form of pro­tec­tion against the virus — re­main our most trou­bling is­sue.

So, as some sec­tors of so­ci­ety cel­e­brate the re­turn of our free­dom of move­ment, we hope that they will al­so con­sid­er that dis­ci­pline in the choic­es we make are al­so a good de­fence. The best choice at the mo­ment is to vac­ci­nate, prac­tise the three Ws and ad­here to the pub­lic health or­di­nances. Now that the coun­try is go­ing to be clos­er to a full re­open­ing again, it may be the on­ly way to pre­vent an on­slaught of COVID deaths.