Focus July 2021

CORONA KYA KARONA! A six lettered word became a pandemic and graduated into everyday Global News. Starting early 2020, or towards the end of 2019, the Covid-19, as it was christened then, spread its treacherous wings far and wide into the world at large, from Osaka to Oklahoma from Melbourne to Moscow. Just about all countries of the world were affected by a virus, which alleged to have come out of Wahun City of Peoples Republic of China, from a laboratory. Corona virus causes illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, according to the World Health Organisation or WHO, as is normally known. This illness has been named COVID-19. Common signs of infection include fever, coughing and breathing difficulties. In severe cases, it can cause pneumonia, multiple organ failure leading to death. The incubation period of COVID-19 is thought to be between 1 & 14 days. Infected patient can also be asymptomatic, meaning they need not display any symptoms of infection despite having the virus in their system. Reportedly, China had alerted the WHO about this unusual pneumonia in Wuhan on December 31st 2019 which travelled quickly through travelers to different parts of the world. From early 2020 to end of May some 16,70,00,000 have been affected by this virus, and some 34,60,000 have died, thus, although % of death to positive is barely 2% or so, it is still very huge compared to the length of period. All those who suffered the attack of this virus, and those who are concerned about the spread of the virus, wanted to know, how it all came about! There have been disturbing questions from different sources. This question about the source and origin of Covid-19 virus, was posed to WHO, which somehow failed to answer to the satisfaction of all concerned. Replying to a media question Prof (Dr) Marc Lipstick, an epidemiologist from Harward University had this to say. “There is a growing concern among scientists that the question has not been treated carefully enough. For those calling for an investigation, the need to know a definitive answer has become clearer as the lack of evidence has become clearer”. According to him, when such a pandemic occurs, it is essential to investigate every possible cause in order to find mitigations and preventions. If Covid-19 turns out to be an illness that came from animal, then there are chances of learning a lot from this spillover. However if Covid-19 is of a laboratory origin then that raises issues of bio-safety in labs. Then there is enough to work on that, in terms of cost and risk. While there are many versions, some logical and some wild, about how after all this Corona Virus Covid-19 emerged, Prof Lipstick has his own take. “Firstly Covid-19 laboratory scenario does not mean that the virus was manufactured in a laboratory-that is one version. To my mind, a plausible version is that a natural virus being studied as a sample, may be from a bat, infected a laboratory worker. Some misunderstandings have arisen, causing confusion in the public sphere over manufacture in a lab and infection in a lab”, has been his take. Coming to the scene in India, as a country, Covid-19 Corona virus, came into the national radar in late March 2020 and realizing the gravity of the pandemic, national leadership declared an early lockdown of three weeks, starting on 25th March to 14th April, to be further extended up to 3rd May. So it was 40 days lockdown. However before 3rd May and the subsequent partial opening, the lockdown was further extended up to 17th May and then to 31st May with some flexibility. It is important to record; that the sudden lockdown and then extension in pieces, the unorganized labour suffered the most misery. Of course, the subsequent opening-up and infusion of funds into economic activities did make some difference, while it is also true that, it will be a long and difficult road for the recovery to take place. The complete opening up after May did bring about better and improved days for all after the brief spell of Covid 19. But the over confidence of perceived recovery also led to complacency and people lowered the guard against the virus, unfortunately so was the government. After the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was dealt with, the centre proclaimed that India has recovered. PM Modi went as far as to declare at Davos World Economic Forum, “India has been successful in saving so many lives, we saved the entire humanity from a big tragedy”. Earlier this year, India was donating Covid vaccines to the world, then India ran short of vaccines, with no hands-on-plan to procure or produce more. While it was true that pandemic was on the wane, it was very much around transmitting at much lower rate. If it was at the end of January 2021, things didn’t remain same. Come February, it started again to rise and government didn’t react fast enough. Complacency continued. However between Mid February and Mid May, there was a sudden and unmanageable spurt with some 12 million reported cases and close to 100,000 deaths, thanks largely to the government taking it easy on Mahakumbh Mela and the protracted poll campaigns in five states, with thousand, may be even lakhs congregating at many places. Yes, as we are writing, things have improved with less and less cases being reported, but the semi urban and rural areas have come under its grip, with inadequate health infrastructure, situation has remained challenging. Thus possibility of underreporting, as thousands of cases of not being tested, was very much there, so also Covid deaths left out as normal death. While under reporting any tragedy of this nature is a norm all over the world, not recognizing the severity of the surging pandemic to act with a sense of urgency to work on mission mode, the government was caught napping. We have witnessed the harrowing stories of people dying due to lack of oxygen and hospital beds, has been a sad commentary on the style of government response. Lack of preparedness and mismanagement has been the bane of emerging scenario. Unfortunately both media and opposition instead of being a positive critics and lending a helping hand to overstretched government machinery, have been very unkind and harsh in their criticism, sometime even peddling outright lie. What needed to be understood and recognized was, like a doctor puts it “Hospitals are not built to stop the road accident. Only careful driving stops accident”. How true! So at the end of the day, if we, the general public and all those who are at the helm of delivery should do their role appropriately and in a responsible way, solution to most problems is only that far. However, when all is said and done the leadership during a crisis time, like even normal times, is of paramount importance. Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi is known to be a serious, no-nonsense, workaholic leader. For a long time, India did not have a decisive leader. He is a leader with strong characteristics and tough exterior. Since he has no attraction for Women Wine and Wealth, he is looked upon as a model by most Indians, as an ideal Prime Minister. But then he too is human. He has his own areas of personality traits which need a degree of correction to become acceptable to all. In fact there are complaints in public domain that he does not consult his cabinet colleagues in matters as serious as handling Covid-19. Of course, that he has never called a meeting of opposition leaders to evolve a consensual approach or even invite suggestion from them by taking them on board has been a glaring inadequacy of the man. A Mumbai based print media commented in its editorial calling the Covid 19 management by PMO as ONE MAN SHOW. This was least expected from the numero uno executive of the country during times of crisis. Reportedly, a senior cabinet minister Nitin Gadkari had suggested to a cabinet colleague about how to increase production of vaccines. It was later found out that there was already a similar move at the PMO, which as a senior cabinet minister he did not know and was learnt to have retracted his statement indicating PM did not approve of his uninvited intervention. This is not a healthy development. This, if true, leave PM Modi friendless at the top during crisis time. This does not auger well for the country. This is a time when nation should summon all its resources-intellectual, administrative and financial-to fight this scourge. Hope and wish in coming days things would improve to bring truly achche din to India and Indians.