Dr Rashid slammed citizens of Lahore for not taking necessary precautions to avoid coronavirus. She allegedly called them ignorant and held them responsible for spike in cases across the city.
Lahoris are weird creatures. For them, everything is a joke. They are so ignorant, they do not listen and don’t care. No other nation is more ignorant and stupid than Pakistanis, says Yasmin.
Moreover, she said efforts were being made to contain the virus and she would continue to update the media about the situation.
Dr Yasmin Rashid urged people to follow the government’s announced standard operating procedures to stop the spread of the virus and said the government has devised a ‘special strategy’ for areas of the provincial capital from where spikes in coronavirus cases have been observed.
Reiterating the need for precautionary measures, Rashid said the virus’ transmission can be reduced by up to 50pc if people wear masks.
Responding to the remarks of Dr Yasmin Rashid, Khawaja Imran Nazir bashed Dr Rashid for calling Lahoris ignorant.
He said it is because of government’s contradictory public messaging, a majority of Pakistanis still haven’t registered the danger.
He further asserted that it was the people of Lahore who made PTI’s Minar e Pakistan gathering a huge success.
Notably, it has been more than three months since Pakistan registered its first coronavirus case. But the government has yet to come out with a unified statement and an orderly policy to inform, educate, and protect the masses. Instead, the public tends to follow dangerously fatalist and superstitious approaches rather than paying heed to science and health experts.
The public disbelief has its roots in the government’s unclear statements from the very beginning. Pakistan’s central leadership, instead of chalking out a unified strategy, tried to score political mileage by coming out with the usual bravado.
One of the first public messages was an Urdu language phrase that translates as “fight instead of fearing coronavirus.” This provided enough ground for the common people to respond frivolously to the deadly virus.
Prime Minister Khan’s speeches downplaying the nature of the menace, and his government’s flipflopping announcements – a lockdown, a smart lockdown and finally no lockdown, all without flattening the COVID-19 curve — further deepened the disbelief among the people.
The prime minister’s statements partly reflect his personal views about the global pandemic and partly emanate from his contempt for his political rivals. When the government of Sindh, the only province run by the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), started amassing praise in the local and international media for its strict COVID-19 measures while Khan’s central government was still dragging its feet on imposing a lockdown, Khan was quoted as saying that it was the “elites who locked down the country.”
At the outset of the outbreak in December 2019, Khan’s government remained unresponsive as the novel coronavirus started taking its toll in China, Pakistan’s northeastern neighbor and close economic and political partner.
