One has been writing ad nauseam that priority should be given for individual protection against the coronavirus and it should be the first line of defence to curb the galloping spread. India over the last week had new cases averaging 60-70,000 per day and with that has crossed the 3 million mark with the last million coming in just 16 days. These numbers do not seem to have drilled any sense into our administrators who continue to unlock the economy.
A couple of days ago shooting of TV serials and films was approved to commence. While shooting indoors is okay, outdoor shooting should not be allowed since you have members of the public throng these shoots with the crowd varying in number depending on how big the stars are.
social distancing goes for a toss in these instances.
Even with indoor shoots we have reports coming in of 7 persons testing positive for the Coronavirus on the sets of a popular Hindi TV serial.
In the Unlock 4 guidelines the Metro is proposed to be opened which is another no-no since large numbers of the public in confined spaces is the ideal ground for the virus to multiply.
The government has also given guidelines that inter-State movement of goods and people should not be hindered or curbed. Actually there is no problem of opening up of all these but at the same time balance it by increasing the protective measures of the individual.
Since it is obvious that the economy cannot be allowed to slide into a depression progressively but at the same time we need to make it mandatory for the public to wear masks/face shields, gloves, stripped down PPE’s or burqa style shrouds which cover you from head to toe and overshoes (optional).
With such levels of protection even schools and colleges can be re-opened and all activities can return to normal.
Look at the differences in approaches relating to schools and colleges in the UK and India. Boris Johnson while heeding a team of experts said for the all round development of children schools need be re-opened quickly since the risk of the virus is much less than the risk of not going to school. While here we want to keep schools closed which will hamper the school-going habit, stunt their learning ability, etc.
Over time you will see more school drop-outs and students from slums and villages that were earlier attending school will stop coming. But with increased protection to the child schools can function normally.
This does not mean we slacken on any of the other measures like testing, containment etc. They can continue to remain in place but what the higher level of individual protection will do is bring down the rate of new infections to more manageable levels and not be runaway as it is now. At the same time the collateral damage in terms of deaths from the virus will dramatically reduce. Thus restore the priority to saving people’s lives.
But adopting blow hot – blow cold measures to open the economy will only end up giving the gaps from which the virus will creep in and extend its footprint.
This has been happening in Europe and East Asia from which we need to learn lessons since the geographical spread of our country is similar to these regions particularly Europe and the populations are also similarly diverse in habits.
Thus if we unlock without counter-balances we will continue to remain in the throes of the virus for eternity.
All this is happening because our politicians and officials lack the understanding and do not have the imagination on methods to tackle the impact from an unknown virus. With politicians what we are seeing is a complete lack of leadership and who consider photo-ops of feeding peacocks more important than getting to grips with measures to tackle the pandemic. They also are taking the virus for granted since it has shown that it is not very lethal and many of their ilk have caught the virus and have recovered.
Thus dealing with the virus has gone off the radar of the politicians. They are also milking the suffering from the virus by expressing sympathy and trying to convince people how much they are doing to take care of the public. These are good vote gathering tactics. These approaches of ignoring the virus is what Trump and Bolsonaro of Brazil followed, which we are subscribing to now and the end result that will emerge is that we will top the list of cases in the world of being infected by the virus.
With the leaders behaving like this, it is not surprising that officials in government are taking their cue from them and issuing irresponsible circulars.
True to their calling the officials who customarily specialise in unidirectional thinking are doing what they do best and that is when told to do lockdown, they will do lockdown rigorously and when unlock is said, they will unlock with gusto.
There is no lateral thinking. There is no consideration of correlating issues, implications and impact assessment of their decisions. These are dangerous trends since then there is a likelihood that the pandemic may get completely out of hand.
The leadership in the country need to take cognisance of this on a most urgent basis since otherwise we will have every other person in the country test COVID +ve.
In that case the politicians will claim that the country has achieved herd immunity from COVID19 and the whole country is safe now with no effort on their part.
One thinks that measures to tackle the pandemic should be driven by technical people like doctors and public health experts working out of an apex body at the Centre and then coordinating with the State level protective bodies of similar experts since it is no longer safe to leave these decisions to a bunch of bumbling politicians and officials.
