Reading headlines after headlines making BAME communities victims of covid19, instead of heroes who shuddered the pandemic, my blood boils. It’s as if before our very own eyes, we’re seeing facts being rewritten to influence history. For me, it is important to keep the record straight, recalling how the covid19 in the UK have been handled and who bears the brunt of the government’s incompetence and recklessness.

Faustina Anyanwu

The 2019/2020 covid19 coronavirus pandemic arrived at the shores of the UK in the late February from its breakout origin in Wuhan China. 

At first, it was not taken seriously by the government who continued to reassure the public to go about their business as the NHS had the capacity to take on the pandemic. 

Rhetoric after rhetoric,  all would come to discover they were simply rambles of empty words that meant absolutely nothing. At least not to the over 30,000 (thirty thousand) individuals who lost their lives to the ineptitude and incompetence of a government which almost also lost their leader to the pandemic. 

It was not until the middle of March as the infection gradually but steadily began to spread, the masses began to see and hear the numbers – hundreds, thousands were infected and tens and hundreds began to drop dead, that people began to raise eyebrows, questioning what the government was up to.  It was clear to the public that all along the government had been pursuing a herds immunity strategy – with no preparations in place to subdue the virus pandemic. 

The UK hospitals hadn’t enough critical care beds, ventilators, nor personal protective equipment. The government-led science had projected 250,000 deaths with their herds’ immunity strategy. 

At this point, common sense and critical reasoning began to flow through the nation and people overwhelmingly were truly questioning the government’s strategy in handling the pandemic. 

Under that immense pressure from ordinary people and independent scientists, the govt caved in and finally decided to lock down the nation to quarantine everyone allowing only but essential services on the 23rd March 2020. 

At this point, however,  it was almost already too late. The virus had already spread through the population and it would take just about 2 weeks later for the numbers of deaths to begin to show just as it had been for our neighbouring country,  Italy. 

The slogan was – stay home and save the NHS, with more meaningless scientific jargons from the government, little did we know that our frontline care workers had been left to go into the war front of this pandemic with absolutely nothing to fight with or do anything to take cover with. In no time, tens and hundreds of our frontlines would have been dangerously exposed to the virus many of them harbouring unbelievable amount of the viral loads which will eventually kill them.  As of 20:00 on 07/5/2020,  At least 200 health and social care workers are now believed to have died of COVID-19.

With their blood, with their lives they saved the nation from the malicious hands of the covid19 coronavirus, these helpless immigrants saved the UK. These heroes were predominantly Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minority immigrants and a few British White indigenous professionals caught up in the crossfire of the pandemic and the government’s ineptitude.  

From all fronts, these ethnic minorities defended the UK from the pandemic – the hospitals, care homes, shops, and public transports. These selfless heroes stood like lambs to the slaughter, selflessly offering themselves as cannon fodder, ill-equipped for their own protection, ill-equipped with enough ventilators, scientific guidance and government legislations, they helplessly marched on, to take on the deadly virus. 

Hundreds of them died alone, in pain, without their loved ones to fare them well in their last moments. Many, left to be buried by their helpless and often struggling, scared and already infected families and communities. They paid the ultimate price with their lives so that the UK will not be overwhelmed by the virus. They protected the NHS even as they lost their lives while the government continued to dither and dribble with empty words.