Musings of a confined mind: The second law of thermodynamics and Covid-19

Mukasa Sirajeh Katantazi

Time check: 7:37 a.m.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.

Entropy is the measure of a system's thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work.

Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system.

The assumption is that the system is closed (isolated) without external exposure.

The fallacy of science as most arts students will assure you with near divine inspired conviction is that it makes many unfounded assumptions.

Yet this is both the beauty and the beast of science.

Simply put, SLOT means there is no such thing as something for nothing.

Sounds philosophical I know, but it is the after effects since I recently just finished reading Simone De Beauvoir’s “The Ethics of Ambiguity” Let me put this in perspective in light of Covid 19.

Uganda like many other states world over is grappling with the novel Coronavirus and again like many other countries closed its borders as a measure in containment of the spread of C19.

This is where SLOT comes knocking. It’s a test of the efficiency of our systems -healthcare, governance, social capital (measured by the trust and sacrifices the citizenry is willing to make for the greater good)-because now we’ve closed  out the outside world.

But then you hear a minister sneaked out her husband from the quarantined area, Officials in OPM declined lower offers of prices for food meant for the “vulnerable poor”(an abominable word in a country with potential of being the regional food basket),and I bet my last shilling as a country we don’t have no more than 2000 ventilators (in a country of almost 42m people).

One month after the first C19 case was confirmed the MoH is still frantically appealing to returnees to voluntarily report for testing and monitoring.

SLOT is one of our most entrenched natural laws—and one that very much possesses a hearty sense of humor, yet also a discernible cruel streak and destructive nature.

She is a beast.

How do I know it is a she? Reminds me of my mother and yet it’s only a woman who can be both kind and cruel at the same time.

She will make a child touch a burning fire to protect it from self-destruction.

Forgetting the physics and mathematics, SLOT in C19 period simply says this: Invest in your systems and people and your entropy will surely increase and you perish.

Ever Imagined why when a car tyre is low on air, one cannot just open the valve and expect the air in the atmosphere to gush into the tyre and fill it back up?

That brings me to the fact that entropy is also a measure of the randomness or disorderliness of a system.

Ring a bell?

The constant rugged presidential speeches with near confusing directives that need a follow up address to clarify the indiscernible.

The uncoordinated food distributions (apparently not even 50% of the intended target group has been reached) and contracts being cancelled -Aponye and Mandela names featuring prominently depending on whose side one is.

Unleashing Col. Nakalema to catch the thieves( thereby acknowledging there thieves within the establishment) and LDUs and police meting out such vicious attacks on abusers of the directives that lives have been lost as a regard of this before the country has registered a C19 death. That’s SLOT disorderliness at play.

My take is that without investments in our systems (educational, healthcare, financial and people etc.) we can close all the borders and the result will be SLOT laughing to the ends of the four corners of the country and wouldn’t care an iota.