Corona in India: what misses ?

Once upon a time, not too distant, we thought that  China is fully cut off , Iran  far off , France far away , Spain out of the way and Italy unimaginable. But we crossed all and looking to close up with UK and then unthinkable USA.

I am talking about corona cases and mortality during early days in March/April and our reaction to corona cases in above countries. In terms of cases currently India is at number 3 and in terms of number of  deaths at number 5 by surpassing Italy. 

This is the status after successful  nation wide lock down of 70 days and after several local state wide lock downs, some still going on.

The narrative about the corona changes significantly every week since march 22nd 2020. We were only doing comparison with above countries and finding a sense of relief in early days that India has defeated Corona whereas developed countries fall prey to it.

Where we have failed !

We primarily  gave Corona too much attention, chest thumping  and frightened the entire nation. By instilling such fear the immunity and will to fight  went down.

We fail to  understand that Corona is inducing such a disease which can be only cured by medicines which takes time and vaccine will provide shield to non-infected. 

We lost precious time since January and also after that not clear about feasible option to try out medicines used for other similar viruses , SARS, common flu etc and aware the citizens of safety and precautionary gear like hand washing, mask, face cover etc. The whole India was much aware about the benefits of hand washing in 2020 due to Swatch Bharat Mission. The unwanted debate on HCQ , N 95 Masks etc. and confusing ICMR communique.

But we tried differently to eliminate corona by lock downs. It failed miserably.

The first lock down was very much needed to prepare the entire country to live with Corona and its awareness but the subsequent lock downs has enforced the idea that we are looking to eliminate it by lock downs. A serious lapse in our thinking by those at the decision table.

We were used to watching changed narrative every week , with too many contradictions, changing goal post every week , the guidelines etc were too complex,lengthy,contradictory and poorly worded and this has not killed corona but it certainly dampen already slowing economy and return of babudom.

One can understand the situation of government during these critical times to show the people that something is being done to protect them but in this case it went too far and that something took us to a different path way altogether. Too much pandemic politics at all level and our poor understanding and thin resources turn it down to worse day by day.

Now the case load is increasing with 50000 per day with a solace of high rate of recovery and also very low mortality rate. And also sero survey in Delhi and Mumbai has proven what we know in beginning that community immunity is the only way to handle it till the World has vaccine.

The country need to accept this and desist from local lock downs and raise awareness for living with corona with all required safety and precaution and general prescription medicines for positive Corona cases like HCQ, antibiotics, paracetamol, others and serious treatment for those with other critical illnesses. Lacs of corona positive patients have been cured by using combination of above medicines and thousands without any.

I am sure GOI must be aware about this from the beginning and now it is time for them to change the course and  let the people of this country know about it. For the sake of showing the country and the world that India is doing enough we are loosing on both fronts the corona and economy. 

The life will be more miserable for millions of people post corona and if it continues like this then we will loose all advances made by India in last 2 decades in eradicating poverty , improving living conditions , improved infrastructure and other aspects of life. Let not the next half decade should be lost.