Eight months ago, I wrote an article on tourism bubbles and Malta’s plan to open up. The prime minister, in his yellow shorts from his boat deck in Sicily, believed then, and still believes (or tries to make us believe), that all is OK. We are in control and all is normal.
Politics and its slavery to construction, industrial and tourism lobbies prevailed in July when all was opened up again.
At the time I had written: “Coming out of the COVID-19 lockdown must be planned for and must be executed with great care. The plan to come out of the present situation and to seek a new normal way of life must be data based and grounded in science and medical/epidemiological expertise. The suggestion…to open Malta up is clearly not based on science or data but only on which lobby is strongest.”
I have looked at pandemic changes between May 2020 and January 2021 and am shocked.
To make it simpler to follow the numbers, imagine that Malta were the same size in population as Germany. Let’s call it GMalta and then compare GMalta with Germany, both updated from May to January 2021.
In May, GMalta would have had 924 deaths when Germany had 7,560. Malta was doing much better than Germany then.
By December 31, GMalta’s deaths would have risen to 40,824, more than 44 times as high as in May, while Germany’s rose to 31,428, just four times higher than in May.
What happened? Malta opened up its economy in July without real restrictions, pretending all was normal.
On January 28, we had more than 200 more new cases of COVID-19 in real Malta. In GMalta, that would translate to 42,000 new cases in one day. Right now, Germany is seeing about 15,000 new cases per day and is in panic mode.
Are we mad to ignore reality or are we led by people in the pockets of vested interests?
Our deaths, if we were GMalta, would be circa 700 per day, the same as Germany’s. Since deaths follow case levels about two weeks later then we can expect our death toll in the next two or three weeks to be double those of Germany today.
Germany has just imposed new travel restrictions to stop new variants of the virus from entering the country, among them the UK and South Africa variants. It has shut all but essential shops, all restaurants, hotels, theatres and bars. Alcohol cannot be consumed outside and mixing between households is limited to only one person from outside the household.
Malta has recently pretended to shut bars, has no real curfew on restaurants and our prime minister just keeps repeating that all is well.
I am afraid he is utterly wrong.
The charts here imagine Malta being as large as Germany, the UK and Cyprus and compare the development of the number of deaths and cases from the end of the first wave in May and through December.
I chose these three countries because Cyprus is similar and also a competitor on the tourism market. The UK has many Maltese living there and we tend to look at their healthcare system as an example for our own. Germany is chosen because it has the best performance among the larger EU countries and also because it is where the first vaccine was developed.
The charts show that, if Malta had the same population as these three countries, our COVID-19 figures after the opening in summer would have caused a national uproar elsewhere. Over here it is business as usual and waves are in the sea.
Are we mad to ignore reality or are we led by people in the pockets of vested interests?
Data and science speak against the choices made. Life is not normal and the pandemic is not under control in Malta. Malta is a perfect example of placing wealth before health.
It is not too late to order a complete shutdown of schools, airports and shopping, except for food and medicine, and a stay-at-home order.
Charmaine Gauci and Chris Fearne, please, do protect us all!
John Vassallo, former ambassador for Malta to the EU