Some animals are more dangerous when wounded than when they are totally fit.

Bison. Buffaloes. Wildebeest.

If a hunter wounds one of these and he cannot find out where it’s hiding, he had better run for life. For these animals will now turn hunter, run him down, and gore him to death.

When a hunter wants to describe a dangerous animal that has been wounded but not killed,he says (in Twi) “m’asoro no!” [I have reduced the animal to its elemental state, in which it will concentrate only on surviving!]

So, how did we come to “soro” Covid-19?

We largely followed the instructions of our Government.

We washed our hands often.

We used sanitizers to wash our hands when some were available.

We coughed and sneezed into tissues, making sure we didn’t fill the air around us with droplets that could infect other people.

We observed a safe distance between ourselves and other people, using a term that had hitherto been unknown to us: “social distancing.”

Many of us stayed “safe at home”.

We avoided churches and mosques, funerals and weddings.

We didn’t go to restaurants and cafes.

We closed our schools.

The result of these sensible measures was that although travellers had brought Covid-19 to our shores, the graphs containing data of our infection/death/recovery rates were nowhere as spectacular as some countries which, in the past, we would have loved to run to, if a pandemic broke out in our own country.

Countries like Italy, Spain, France and good old Great Britain.

It is our relatively good performance that has left Covid-19 reeling on the ropes in the boxing arena. “Ghana? Who would have thought?” Covid and its handlers have been saying to themselves in astonishment.

But they are now thinking hard about evolving a second game plan to get us.

Leaks from their camp suggest that their new strategy will make use of our own weaknesses in trying to defeat us.

Their first weapon will be our well-known complacency. They will capitalise on that by making us reason thus: “Look, we don’t have the facilities of Italy or the UK or Spain or China. But look at our figures. Surely, we can relax a little?”

Not only that. The Covid camp is now releasing fake news videos, in which old and moribund fetishes have been revived by some of our prophets who only predict the results of events that have already taken place.

One of them was heard the other day saying that a hitherto-moribund deity called Brekune, had told him that our President would co-opt both the Christian and Muslim communities, to fight against Covid-19.

As soon as the silly media that dote on false prophesies by amoral prophets had widely disseminated this inanity, another prophet said in Facebook that Tigare, a deity that has not been heard of since its chief priest committed suicide in the 1940s (after being caught making love to the wife of the fetish’s treasurer) had appeared to him and prophesied that the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) would publicly commend Ghana for its effective measures against Covid-19. (Naturally, the prophet said this after hearing that the W.H.O. had made Ghana a principal “hub” of its operations in Africa!)

Next came statements by imitative prophets who had been “visited” by other moribund deities, such as Bunto, Adade, Nsuaapem, Sankobre, Denteh and Adifulitser. They all told us that Ghana was winning the game against Covid-19.

So, we must put on our guard more seriously than ever. When we go to lorry stations, in search of motor transport, we must insist on observing safe distances between ourselves and other passengers. Whatever the driver or his aplanke might say about “social distancing”, each of us must use his or her own common sense. Just ask yourself, “Suppose this next passenger were to sneeze or cough. Would he send droplets my way, full of viruses?”

The common sense answer to that question must be, “It depends on how powerfully the cough or sneeze comes out of the passenger next to me!” Which means, one must watch the passenger carefully. Has he got “polish” in his personality, or is he the sort of person who enjoys launching an avalanche from his nose or mouth “gbbboooooorah!” whenever he sneezes?

When he coughs, does it sound as if the cavities on either side of his chest will break into pieces and collapse?

Obviously, your own experience – and common sense – will tell you whether it is safe or not to travel in the company of such a person. Just remember that no matter how hard-pressed you are for time, you have only one life and that allowing somebody’s ill-mannered cough or sneeze to take that life away from you, would be utterly stupid.

I mean, do you know that there are more stars and galaxies in the universe than there are sands on all the beaches of the world (I love this statement so much that I don’t care whether you have heard it from me before or not! )

I mean, just think of this: you came out of all that matter and anti-matter stuff; you are made up of the same quarks and electrons and positrons as all that is in the universe or universes, and you allow someone else’s cough or sneeze to snuff out this life whose origins you don’t even understand?

Do you know that as you sit in that trotro or taxi, you are surrounded by a bombardment of neutrinos that charge down invisibly from somewhere in the universe(s), at a rate of about 2 billion per second?

Kai, you allow Covid-19 to enter your body when you have such a numerically invincible safety net around you? It would be crazy, wouldn’t it? And so ungrateful to the quantum mechanics that made all that possible?

Ok, they say we should wear face masks. Let’s do it. After all, it will save us from smiling at people when what we really want to do is to smash their faces in. Yeah – how many people have failed to settle their debts to you? Or stolen your mobile phone?

Oh all right – suppose you met Donald Trump, wouldn’t you like to run a mile? The man says you should use hydroxychloroquine to cure Covid-19 (having, in the mean time, starved his Centres for Disease Control of the funds with which it could verify the claim about hydroxychloroquine!)

Ha, Trump is not finished acting as the world’s greatest doctor: he also thinks an injection or ingestion of antiseptics like bleach can deliver a blow to Covid-19 that will kill the virus dead.

When journalists ask him where he got such brilliant ideas from, he says he was just being “sarcastic”! Sarcastic at a time like this, when his “subjects” are dying like flies from Covid-19, due to his sluggish approach to dealing with the disease?

Charlie, I think that sometimes, “under-development” is a good state to be in!

---

Cameron Duodu is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster.