Put it down to lockdown fatigue from COVID-19 protocols, but Jamaicans, like much of the world, appear to have — with wild abandon — packed away the tools fashioned to survive the novel coronavirus pandemic and resumed life as they knew it previously.

And yet, what a tragedy that would be if, instead of learning the valuable lessons from having to cope with mankind’s worst pandemic, we choose to waste ‘a good crisis’ by dismantling the innovations and squandering scarce resources.

We have several times in this space emphasised that the Ministry of Health and Wellness had a duty to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place to put Jamaica in a state of permanent readiness for the next pandemic which — it doesn’t take an Einstein to know — is bound to come.

Attempts by this newspaper to ascertain an audit of the infrastructure that has been put in place over the two years of the pandemic have been decidedly futile. One is led to conclude that no such build-up of additional infrastructure is in place.

Arrival of the monkeypox virus in one confirmed case of a man who travelled from the United Kingdom has come as proof that our concern was based on reality and not profligacy when we called for national preparedness.

Dr Christopher Tufton, the minister of health, struck the right tone in telling journalists Wednesday that there is no need for panic over monkeypox, as we said in Friday’s edition of this newspaper. And there really is no need for any lockdowns.

Our point here is that we have not seen the big actions at the macro level that are necessary to prepare for another pandemic, which would ensure that the country does not repeat many of the mistakes of the COVID-19 era.

We think, for example, that Dr Tufton should have been in a position, not just to promise, as he did, that a review of all isolation facilities “will be carried out to determine the country’s capacity to manage monkeypox and COVID-19 simultaneously”, but to say what state these facilities are in.

A minister in charge of the country’s health should have been in a position to say more than that “material outlining the necessary protocols, including surveillance, clinical and lab management, as well as infection prevention and control are being completed for distribution to health teams islandwide”.

The minister also told the nation that “sensitisation of health teams and the public, which began more than a month ago, is being enhanced”. It would have been far more convincing if he had given specifics of that sensitisation programme.

Of course, the business of having the country in a permanent state of readiness for a pandemic is not exclusively a job for the health ministry, though it must lead. It is an all of Jamaica concern that calls for the contribution of every one of us.

For example, the Ministry of Education must sharpen online education, using the invaluable lessons learnt from COVID-19, and the transport ministry must keep the sector abreast of what the protocols require.

Work-from-home arrangements should be fine-tuned to ensure that productivity does not suffer, while employees learn how to separate family and work matters. It would also behove the church to extend and improve online services which many were forced to offer for the first time.