Cross that cannot be borne?

21 April 2020

It is just this bombardment of news or the constant eagerness to see if the curve has flattened, is it the waiting for good news or the sheer volume of news, this world in Corona Times is winging its own way along, such that one is bound to be confounded. This is just April in 2020, and we are now wondering how children can resume school, how we can go back to our routine.

There are efforts by newscasters and social media platforms to share experiences at individual level across the globe. The experiences of Taiwan, South Korea and China are guiding the prescriptions that are being offered for the rest of the world in ‘opening up’ or ‘exiting’ the lockdown, which now seems to be the next Himalayan Task before the civilised world.

In what can be trusted as a time of solidarity, sharing information and experience is to be expected, yet what has been uncharacteristic is what President Trump has been doing, which was pointed out by former CNN star Piers Morgan who is also one of the few media persons who continues to be followed by President Trump on Twitter. Piers Morgan in his interview spoke of how Trump should now be presidential, he cannot be posturing the way in which he is amplifying the worst lies curated by FoxNews anchors and special guests and allowing them to shape his agenda, the latest being those series  of tweets where Trump wants to liberate US states that are under Shelter At Home orders by Democrat Governors! It makes no sense for protestors to come out and demand reopening of the state in Michigan which has the highest mortality rate of the whole of the USA, bigger in comparison to even New York! And all these narratives are fuelled not by science, but by what Taleb calls Scientism. Right now the author of Black Swan argues that unless there is a testing methodology to identify the immunity of individuals, there is not way you must endanger fellow humans unless you can offer them the protection of N95 masks and spacing in public transport and public spaces. If safe distancing is physically carried out, as christened by media into social distancing, and if it is accompanied by wearing of masks by all, then the chance of a Covid19 transmission is around 1.34%, and if you wear N95 mask then the chance is less than 1%. Research is yet to tell us, if asymptomatic cases are due to individual immunity or decided by the initial viral load that gets inoculated into  a person. More the viral load the more the chance of a serious illness? This much is clear, and must be told to all those in public life as their stump message for their constituents- Covid19 virus has only two failsafe methods to avoid infection- hand washing and hand hygiene is the first, the second is the wearing of mask that covers the nose and mouth as compactly as possible. The quality of hand hygiene with soap and water is greater than with any alcohol based hand sanitiser. ( So Indian plans to use rice surplus to make spirit based hand sanitisers is not a great idea per se!) Likewise for masks, the N95 is best, followed by a medical/surgical mask, followed by a handmade or improvised mask, including reusable masks. As far as sanitisation of public spaces and individuals go, bleach is not the preferred agent, hydrogen peroxide is. So in CNBC report on reopening public spaces you can see tents erected in office entrances which fumigate Chinese workers as they enter office in Beijing! You can also see how the cost of reorienting the workspaces to Covid19 proofing is something which businesses cannot readily bear, as shown in the report of DW from Spain! So where are the masks?

Amidst this, came something which was a ticking time bomb in any case. India was already in the news for not controlling the narrative around a single source event of nearly 3000 Covid19 suspected cases arising from the Tablighi Jamaat congregation at Nizamuddin which happened in mid March. Instead of the efforts being viewed as a public health effort to trace all suspected cases from a single point source through contact tracing, miscreant and mischievous media and social media influencers allowed it to foment into a Corona Jihad and painted a picture that India’s own Covid19 situation was singing along nicely until this rude awakening and what was portrayed an an intentional damage to her campaign of lockdown 1.0. It doesn’t help that at the national level, or at the level of Delhi local government whether it was the MHA or the CM of NCR, did not step in to correct this narrative. The counter was launched from Karnataka by old warhorse and veteran politician Yedurappa as CM and from an equally well versed in politicking KCR as CM of Telangana. This rearguard action was taken up by Maharashtra, TN and Kerala, but for obvious reasons the narrative continued undiminished on social media.  There were hints from the Gulf that it was getting uncomfortable for the local governments there, especially tweets and Facebook posts by Indians based there. First came a princess taking up cudgels for Muslims by reporting some handles to local police with follow up tweets which showed that those individuals were identified and action resultant made them lose their visa. So one handle with nearly 100000 followers monikered ‘desimojito’ wanted all RW handles to change their status to India and those in India to change theirs to Gulf countries to thwart such efforts. Within 24 hours that handle got deleted. Then came the assault on Hon’ble MP from Bengaluru Mr Tejasvi Surya for tweets he made in 2015, 2016 and later, in which now openly the princess and some business leaders from Gulf countries said for his reprehensible views against Arabs and Arab women, he would not be welcome in Arab lands in the future. The handle of the PMO issued a tweet which appealed for rising above partisan communal feelings to fight the Covid19 which was followed by a specific tweet from Ambassador Pavan Kapoorhttp://@AmbKapoor which was reported on NDTV.(https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/coronavirus-india-uae-ambassadors-tweet-amid-backlash-over-islamophobia-posts-in-india-2215107?pfrom=home-bigstory)At a time when millions of Indians are working and resident in the Gulf, it makes no sense to engage in a diatribe of sorts, a diplomatic snafus which is eminently avoidable, for India is still a developing country and we are very much in this neighbourhood, with our need for oil and remittances from expatriates of this region. So social media is now muted, there is a distinct lull now on this front, with some videos coming out of Karnataka showing a Mangalorean returning home after treatment for Covid19, appealing to his Muslim community by talking about how well he was looked after and healed by the police and medical workers. This video is hoped to have a salutatory effect on incidents of agitations elsewhere in Karnataka and beyond where survey medical staff and police escorting them are being assaulted not just in Muslim localities but also in others, as was seen in Bengaluru in Padarayanapura. The most shocking is the stoning and waylaying of funereal hearse of Dr Simon a  reputed Neurosurgeon from Chetpet in Chennai who died of Covid19 at Apollo Hospital and who was sought to be given his last rites by his colleagues. The hearse was violently re routed from Ega Theatre signal and luckily under Police escort they managed to go to another cemetery for his interment. Why were crowds agitated? Why were they not willing to reason that all necessary measures to contain the infection was to be undertaken, that colleagues in PPE were going to perform the interment? Again as a connecting the dots exercise, one can see how TN was being fed on a Covid19 fear mongering diet by local TV studios operating out of the prism of the TJ outbreak where nearly 1000 Covid19 Positive cases of TN came from this single source. This despite the low mortality in TN seen so far.

So has this generation of humanity become so softened with certainty and orderly life, with all amenities and comforts at its beck and call, that it cannot undertake these disruptions imposed by the pandemic? Is our moral compass so free wheeling that any narrative can get to it and get us to point in a particular prejudiced manner? Is our foundation in science and common sense so fickle that mere mouthing of theories on TV can make us buy any nonsense? Are we so sold to comfort and chorus that we cannot bear this cross?