20 August 2020
When humanity will look back, it will see how much of the current woes it is in the throes of was self inflicted. We will vince and convince ourselves that we have committed ourselves firmly, that this will never be repeated, that we will ensure that such a surrender of common sense will never happen ever in future…
What are the greatest misses that we suffered in this Pandemic, which we could have easily grasped with full hands and exploited? The SARS CoV2 virus was found in sewage, it was found on fomites, on surfaces and in aerosol. Yes, to confirm that it was able to hang in the air for upto 3 hours aerosolised was to take some more time. Yet we had fair warnings, we could have bridged that gap, yet we had other considerations…
We heard angry scientist from Spain say that if we paid pittance for scientists while paying Royal Ransoms for footballers, our Science will never be as ready as our foot ball seasons are, always on the roll. Yes, very valid point. Another thing we heard was about how ill equipped hospitals were with respect to ventilators, protective gear for health care workers, including stocks for PPE, Masks and other gear, whereas in most developed western societies the police were as well equipped as their militaries. In USA we saw vividly during the #BlackLivesMatter protests how the police were able to mount responses, in India we saw how Police were able to undertake operations across states to execute a surrendering gangster enroute or to administer a debasing form of physical punishment that once used to be the forte of college seniors ragging their freshies! We have seen largely, political leaders of major countries, go on about their businesses without much change in their routines, except for visits abroad for summitry or conferences, and even after it was clear that a Pandemic had taken foot on our planet, we continued with ‘political grandstanding and events’ like Tulsa Rally of Mr Trump or Namaste Trump in Ahmedabad in India.
Lockdown was a phase when we were to catch up on testing and tracing, when our hospitals and health infrastructure built capability so that the shelter in place enforced on nearly all of humanity would get lifted and the pandemic would get a health based and health led focus. Instead we continue to see arbitrariness like the sudden move of UK to enforce quarantine for all continental holiday makers that forced them to beat a retreat hastily back across the Channel. Or the moves in India where some states have ‘stand still’ on select days in the week,(West Bengal) and some have entirely shuttered down on paper(TN).
We see how distorted our senses, our wicked sense of parochialism on display, when an outbreak is reported in Vietnam or in New Zealand or news that Kerala’s containment strategy is unravelling with steady build up of cases. It is also perversity, that we wish for others the adversity we are facing, an adversity largely self inflicted for the lack of discipline, utter disregard to the science and more. The proportionality between these two and their few hundred cases is lost on nations like US and India grappling with millions, even the demographics of younger population that Indians believe would spare them largely is not being contrasted with a near similar demographic pyramid that Brazil has…why don’t we understand that what is visiting Brazil will visit us, or what is visiting USA will visit us, unless we do things differently?
Why we will not use face coverings called masks, when they are the most effective barrier protection we have against the Covid19 infections? Why is the EU and Western countries in such a tearing hurry to declare ‘the normal’ by opening up public spaces without masks? If we see the resurgence of Covid19 cases across the continent, we can see the correlation between opening up and lack of face covering as the reasons despite social distancing that Covid19 is resurfacing! Why don’t we spend tax dollars or rupees on campaigns about wearing masks, why don’t those automated messages playing on calls in our telephones not calling on us to wear masks in clear and no uncertain terms! When it was April, we saw Police pushing off goods for sale on push carts and use their batons on hapless poor in the name of enforcing the lockdown. Masks are compulsory in India, yet in few places one hears that Police is ticking off joggers, walkers and commuters for not wearing masks or not wearing them correctly. In several states, police have actually disappeared from the streets altogether.
We want a CBI enquiry for an actor who committed suicide apparently, for which we can go to the Supreme Court and they oblige with their extraordinary powers, but any one for the cause of how faulty or spurious ventilators were supplied in Gujarat or nationwide under PM CARES? For complaints of nurses, doctors, including one that involved a flash strike in AIIMS for PPEs by nursing staff? When you hear the SC rule out the need for transparency and audit of the PM CARES by the Auditing Top Dog of India- the CAG, you can actually understand, that this is a view top down. Should the judges fall ill, to this virus, would they face any of the circumstances that meets the citizens in whose name they dispense justice!
Is Covid19 having a character of altering our ‘thought process’ in that we suspend common sense, down rate obvious priorities? Look at how our education system is…the country wants to conduct NEET and other entrance examinations for professional courses at ‘Centres’. Why not from their homes or wherever with software based platforms like http://www.exam.net? Why not devise a post online written examination with an online interview of shortlisted candidates, so that their mettle can be confirmed prior to admission? If at all physical examinations have to be held, should not the state step in to offer sanitised centres, offer protective gear to invigilators and students, ensure social distancing and carry them out? Why does not the ‘competent authority’ understand that anxiety of students is because of the actual nature of the health system, that should any of them aspirants fall sick, their family life time savings will get expended to treat Covid19 today in any private facility which is their actual source of anxiety? Can the government guarantee treatment at Medanta or AIIMS or Bombay Hospital or Max, Manipal, Columbia Asia, Apollo or such top of the line tertiary care private hospital chain?
One of the biggest actions for which government is established by civil society is to guarantee in calamitous times, that it will step in. That it will ensure that there is food on the table, a bed in a care facility and resources to deal with challenges to life in favour of its citizens. We see how supposedly capitalist societies of Western ideology are actually doing far more by way of economic and social measures for their citizens, as underscored by this role of Government, than the so called Welfare democracies like India are able to do.
Finally, has science and its practitioners acquitted themselves well? Forget the fringe that tried to downplay the pandemic, even the mainstream has not been able to send out a clear message on public behaviour expected during the pandemic. It is left to nurses and doctors recording messages on their ‘death beds’ https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1281708871879286784.htmlbefore going to be intubated, about the graveness of the Covid19 infections. From predatory pricing of repurposed drugs, to treatment costs for Covid19 care, there is an entirely monetary game going on right in the middle of humanity’s biggest health challenge in a century! Further, see the litany of medical research papers, many of them peddling narratives as shown by their subsequent withdrawals! Whether it is established journals like NEJM and Lancet, they were all guilty. A dedicated site like http://www.retractionwatch.com monitors such retractions and withdrawals for Covid19 alone listing upto 3 dozen such papers! https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-papers/Then in India we have studies with serology testing for Antibodies performed in Delhi, Mumbai and now Pune, which suggest a curious leap of epidemiology, whereby India could well leap straight from incidence outbreaks and clusters straight to herd immunity without going through Community Transmission, with studies suggesting upwards of 40% of the population showing immune responses to Covid19! Please do not ask me how India can show so few cases, so few hospital admissions, morbidities and mortalities and yet attain such high figures of possible post infective immunity to the novel Corona Virus SARS CoV2! This is no Voodoo witch doctor or gudu gudu pandi soothsaying, this is India’s cutting edge epidemiological research teams, using Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) targeting monoclonal antibodies assays https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7219369/are causing a lot of optimism as well as skepticism, simply because India could either be an outlier or it could be a case of poor science and poorer actual methodology which could dent our standing in the global health sciences arena. ( Remember WHO Chief Scientist is an Indian today) And India is not alone wishing for Herd Immunity!https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html
So how will we look back? It will depend on how it ends. If this pandemic devastates India economically and Indians health wise, it would be a kind of double whammy India was never going to be prepared for, but it would reorder our priorities for generations to come. Back in 2014, most Indians felt we were on the cusp of a new trajectory in growth in all spheres, that we were soon going to be a developed nation. Globally, this Pandemic has shown how important it is for humans to accept the limits of their understanding of nature and predicting its course as we were caught off guard by our politics and our hubris in this Pandemic. Does the economic weakness of China and India going forward, and the Global strengthening of Green Movement aid the recovery of our Planet from Climate Change?
Of course we would call ourselves of 2020 as stupid, as shortsighted and as unbecoming of the humans we are capable of being! Of for want of a mask, humanity lost so much of its social, political and economic kingdoms!
indiarubberman.com 