LETTER | As the clock ticks the ground situation is getting both ridiculous and chaotic. As the Raya festivities edge closer, the streets are jam-packed.

Roadways with the roadblocks are showing up very clearly that there are far too many people actively mobile.

Even in the wake of an imminent gate crash by the virus, we are still talking about movement control order (MCO) when what we needed two weeks ago is a lockdown for 14 days.

Today we have lost lead time which is a critical component to checkmate the virus.

As medical and healthcare front-liners keep harping that they are under acute demands trying to address the unstoppable admissions we still are not even getting a whisper for a lockdown from the authorities.

It would be most futile and idiotic to lockdown once we reach astronomical numbers of infections.

We are tethering at 1:60-70 and that by global comparison is a dangerous state for Malaysia.

Experts are already expressing their deep concerns. Netizens are on overload mode sharing their concerns and displeasure on social media.

But congregational prayers, shopping, getting to work for fear of being sacked - all of these cannot respond to the given MCO now in place.

You can have the roadblocks. You can tell people to keep social distancing. You can keep harping to traders to observe the standard operating procedures (SOPs).

You can even threaten that anyone violating the MCO or not complying with the SOPs will not be fined anymore but sent to prison.

Can our leaders not see that as long as people are highly mobile to keep economies (or your business interests) up and kicking, the Covid-19 mutating variants are bound to gatecrash.

We need to curtail the aggregate of potential hosts as crowds and mass movement of humans is much needed by the virus to ballistic.

Lockdown is the only solution. All else is sheer make-believe.

Will the prime minister please address the nation now and not wait for Raya to be over?

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.