JAKARTA - The government is considered not to involve scientific experts and scientists in making policies to handle COVID-19. In fact, an expert admitted that providing input to the government was a big challenge for him.
This was conveyed by Epidemiologist from the Faculty of Public Health, University of Indonesia (FKM UI) Pandu Riono. He admitted that he was one of the people who realized the importance of science in handling the corona virus and designed this COVID-19 modeling, as a precaution.
He suspected that the virus had entered Indonesia since January and considered the government at that time to be denial or deny this allegation.
"Since January we had been expecting (suspected that the corona case was in Indonesia, red) and were also upset, how come the reports (of the case, red) continued to be negative. The denial (denial, red) of the government at that time was extremely high," Pandu said as quoted as saying. from ABC News, Monday May 18.
The attitude of the Indonesian authorities who took this virus lightly, then made him even more active in researching this epidemic in the hope of helping the government later.
Pandu and colleagues then made a model related to patient surges in the absence of serious interventions. Recently, this modeling was used by BAPPENAS to estimate hospital needs.
This modeling, he also presented to several local governments. However, the advice given by Pandu at that time was not immediately accepted by the government.
"(Providing input to the government) is a big challenge for me, especially how to translate academic findings into a policy," said Pandu.
From his experience, Pandu also realized that there were other difficulties in the structure of the Indonesian government. That includes hearing more from their staff. "This official listens more to his expert staff, not outside academics like us," he said.
He also said that before giving input to President Joko Widodo, he had to find and deal with expert staff. Pandu also managed to meet the staff. It's just that, when they met, it turned out that the staff didn't care what they said.
This effort shows that it is not only difficult for academics to provide input to policy makers but also shows that there is no systematic effort to involve academics in Indonesia in cutting the spread of COVID-19.
"It should have involved all universities from the start. LIPI should have functioned, Kemenristek and Dikti also (should have) functioned gathering input from academics," he said.
Not only Pandu, an academic also complained about the government's reaction. The officials who invited him, he said, were mostly looking for models and numbers that were suitable for them and did not care about the basic knowledge he explained.
"When they saw my numbers, they protested, 'the numbers don't match.' I was confused, this number is not a matter of match. This is a scientific calculation," said the researcher who did not want to be named.
This incident that he experienced made him discouraged and doubted whether the government would listen and use science as a reference in policy making.
Moreover, until now, epidemiologist from Eikjman Oxford Clinical Research Unit, Iqbal Elyazar said that Indonesia does not yet have the right epidemic curve.
In fact, this curve is important for measuring the success or failure of the intervention. Including, relaxing a number of regulations that reduce the spread of COVID-19.
When confirmed about this, the Spokesperson for Handling COVID-19 Achmad Yurianto then emphasized that the modeling figures submitted by scientists or science experts were not that important.
"For us, what is important is not estimating when and how much but a joint commitment to carry out the PSBB," he concluded.
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