The State of Emer­gency was just a few hours old when we were re­mind­ed yes­ter­day that dis­ci­pline is not one of the things we are col­lec­tive­ly known for.

A re­li­gious group felt that one of the best ways to save the na­tion was to gath­er on Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do to pray for God to res­cue this coun­try from the COVID-19 virus.

While we agree with the need for prayer, it's clear that those gath­ered there yes­ter­day failed to un­der­stand that had they done so pri­vate­ly in their homes, they would have been pray­ing safe­ly and act­ing law­ful­ly with the same ob­jec­tive.

It is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why they felt God would hear their voic­es in an open pub­lic space, loud­er than he would have heard them in their hous­es.

Their ac­tions brought a po­lice re­sponse, which, thank­ful­ly, end­ed with­out con­fronta­tion, de­spite at least one mem­ber of the group call­ing the wrath of God down on the of­fi­cers.

This should not be hap­pen­ing one day af­ter the worse week this coun­try has faced in the pan­dem­ic, in which 73 peo­ple died and 2,777 were in­fect­ed with the virus.

As the bib­li­cal book of Ec­cle­si­astes notes, to every­thing, there is a sea­son and a time to every pur­pose un­der the heav­en. Yes­ter­day was sim­ply not the time nor sea­son for a pub­lic prayer gath­er­ing.

Re­li­gious lead­ers wield a lot of in­flu­ence over their con­gre­ga­tions and must use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to guide mem­bers to up­hold the laws.

To do oth­er­wise is to en­cour­age in­dis­ci­plined ac­tions, which goes against most re­li­gious teach­ings.

And the call now must not on­ly be to obey the law but to unite with all front­line work­ers in fight­ing this dread virus.

Dis­ci­pline and re­straint is a clear way of demon­strat­ing such uni­ty as shown by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on Fri­day which called on the gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment a cur­few among tougher mea­sures.

The Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and oth­er busi­ness­es that made the call, sig­nalled to the na­tion that they un­der­stand the safe­ty of all cit­i­zens must come first.

Their call came on the heels of oth­er busi­ness­es - which are al­lowed to re­main open un­der the reg­u­la­tions - choos­ing to vol­un­tar­i­ly sus­pend their rights to con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions.

That too, demon­strat­ed uni­ty and dis­ci­pline, there­by fur­ther re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for gath­er­ings to the ben­e­fit of their staff and cus­tomers.

It has al­ways been up to us as in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to join the fight by do­ing the right thing. The ac­tions re­quired are not gar­gan­tu­an. We are all sim­ply be­ing asked to fol­low sim­ple guide­lines.

The State of Emer­gency now gives the po­lice and sol­diers op­por­tu­ni­ties to more swift­ly sup­press il­le­gal gath­er­ings and oth­er ac­tions that are not in keep­ing with the safe­ty rules.

On every oc­ca­sion that these of­fi­cers are called to do so, they too are putting them­selves at risk. We must be dis­ci­plined enough to re­sist the stu­pid ideas of cur­few par­ties and sneaky gath­er­ings and those so mind­ed must be made to un­der­stand that a firm sup­pres­sion of their ac­tions by po­lice and sol­diers is sup­port­ed by the large ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens.

We can on­ly get back to our usu­al life if we fol­low the pro­ce­dures.

As of yes­ter­day, the num­ber of deaths for the month of May alone - 116 - was just four short of all deaths reg­is­tered in 2020.

If that does not sink in, what else will?