Trepidations

10 February 2020

For a long time, humans have waged a less than equal war forever against the unknown that claimed lives by wasting the human body in a short span of time. The fact of how quarantine was the only known technique to prevent the further loss of populations when such outbreaks happen is also recorded in epics and biblical texts.

If one sees how the progress of science has changed the discourse, you have to admire how now ‘God’ as a concept is no longer blamed for such visitations and exigencies. The biggest breakthroughs have been the discovery of the unseen microbes, virus, bacteria or fungi or other pathogens as science calls them, which were only speculated in Sri Rudram and ancient Tamil liturgy which contemplated the ubiquitous presence of the ‘God Principle’. So ancient people were clear that the body was capable of producing poisons, it was theorised that pus or other secretions from the body other than its usual pores was the body’s message that it was ‘contaminated’. Blood itself was viewed as a contaminant in the medieval era, calling for containment by segregation, and somewhat deviously the female menstrual process was treated as the ‘ritual’ contamination of the feminine embodiment and subjected to strange concepts involving further ostracisation and denial of space in rituals and religious celebrations, even as headaches were treated differently as was epilepsy because it involved men too!

So when human species invented a great litany of sanitation processes by chemicals, by bacterial and viral remedies, multi pronged approach of vaccination, counter inoculations, using human body’s own immune system to generate a range of options, a contagion became one that was feasibly open to the efforts of containment. Perhaps the biggest success Post World Wars, was how humans have altered the course of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Subsequently we have seen outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, MERS and now Coronavirus and in each of them we have seen and are seeing how the global responses are scientific, with identified thresholds for triggering the next round of responses. 

Where we can be legitimately proud of the scientific progress and the practical demonstrated worth of ‘modern medicine’ including modern ‘Preventive and Social Medicine’, and where it’s own practitioners acknowledge the linkage to the dark and sometimes even unsavoury pasts from which it gained experience, evidence and exactitude, and also the caveat that while treatment may transform into algorithmic progression but cure still remains a puzzle, full of idiosyncrasy and an individual outcome! It is this range of prognosis that is preyed upon by predators, very intelligent and articulate people who are out to exploit the simple fact that while diseases and illnesses may come under the unifying umbrella of species, with global standards of definition(International Classification of Diseases now in its 11^th Revision), outcomes are intricately individualistic.

Human frailty is such that despite all this evident progress, where even the current Corona Virus outbreak in Hubei province centred on Wuhan has killed less than 1000 people for more than 30000 confirmed cases, ( mortality rate as it evolves is close to 3% in a disease outbreak that has lasted less than 3 months at this stage), that rumour, conspiracy theory and points of view of ‘illiberal clampdown’ or gross violations of human rights are all having a field day!

Every actor or reviewer is busy intoning his/her point of view. Is it not a sombre moment for human solidarity? That instead of speculating we simply observe, we help if we can, and we educate others and ourselves on what is scientifically known. Yet understand what has transpired-

1. A hero legend around a Chinese doctor who first feared this outcome and shared his apprehensions with his peer group and friends in Wuhan has come about. Now what this soul did was guess estimation? Instinctive conclusion? In science, documentation is important. Incomplete information can become a stumbling block. The public outrage is more due to an “If only”!
2. Theories swirled about Germ Warfare, how this was a failed experiment by PLA scientists to tame and weaponise a virus strain from bats, and perhaps an embittered scientist decided to let loose this in the Wuhan meat market, which has been identified as the point source for this outbreak of Coronavirus. There is even one story going how HIV DNA has been isolated from the Coronavirus strain that is cause of the current outbreak.
3. The Communist system hates bad news, it prevented whistle blowing efforts of doctors in Wuhan, that is has clamped down on the local population and actually situation is worse there than is being let known. Wuhan is the hub of automobile industry in China. Hubei province is an important part of the World Factory that China is. So it would be counter intuitive for the Chinese to allow an infective disease to lay waste to its population of skilled workers. What we have seen is a typical response curve, to verify the facts and follow a scientifically determined one! Even the WHO was cautious to announce the global outbreak taking a full month after the outbreak was reported by Chinese on New Year’s eve!
4. Then we have Indians, theorising how India is never the source point, that we have enough herbs and spices that can tackle these viruses and bacteria, conveniently forgetting how incidents of Dengue, Chickungunya, SARS, Swineflu, Nipah and even this Coronavirus have have been registered and how our health system is actually nothing much to write home about, with only Kerala saving our blushes with the handling of both Nipah and now Coronavirus, which is great for a state which once leaned on India’s Army Medical Corps for an outbreak of Chickungunya in early part of the previous decade! Of course, India is now in a spot where cow urine and excreta are considered universal panacea by not just semi literate, but by doctrinaire uncles and aunts who have exited from exalted portals of her IITs and IIMs and such!
5. Nationalism is not an effective debugging device, for if it were, then this current outbreak would have been contained by the Chinese videos of stunning isolation wings and two brand new hospitals adding some 2500 beds within ten days would have done the trick. If Chinese had locked down their Hubei province and held their populations captive, so think how protestors were blaming Hong Kong administrator for not closing down the island territory fast enough, or how Singapore is bracing for the virus with its version of a lock down! Much of the criticism from US and even within the scientific community is actually triggered by prejudice. 

So we keep our vigil as well as create panic. So much of it that facemarks including the N95 series is in short supply. With no known medicine for coronavirus at least people are not stocking up on Tamiflu or Doxycycline or any such molecule! Of course, homeopathic remedies have been quickly debunked by agencies that excoriate fake news and false hoods! Actually I have confirmed one serious illness that humanity has not even noticed, but which has taken possession of her species by the scruff of her neck! It emerges from her extreme prejudice, from her lack of perspective, her childish or petty insistence on being ahead of the speculation curve! It is the ‘mother of all theories’ the WhatsApp University and worse! It is rumour milling! Trepidations are trepidations because the full terror of what  rumour is capable remains isolated, in stray instances of lynching! Of cold blooded murder! Imagine if ‘Walking Dead’ were to visit us in reality? In a twist, I would liken our current demographic characteristic and psyche to be like these Walking Dead, for we are stuck to a rambling distant past psychologically, unable to come to terms with our modernity, with the new complexities, with scientific temper and rationalism founded upon it. The future, with more and more alternate media sources, active social media platforms and tendency of opinions, falsehoods and half baked science or pseudoscience to go viral, appears one to be viewed with trepidations!