CORONA - THE PANDEMIC

Corona - The Pandemic

By the time it was second week of March 2020, the novel corona virus had already infected more than 100,000 persons and had claimed over 4000 lives and had spread to over 100 countries. Human race had collectively outlived many a disasters, diseases and epidemics even in the age when we had not made enough so called "developments" - in medical science, communication networks and information technology. But this one turning out to be different and scary - because of its global transmission and because no one knew the cure. The Covid-19 gained world wide attention, may be because rich and influential were at risk equally. Rather the rich and "connected" were more at risk than poor and "isolated".

Common flu virus (Influenza) had killed more people last year - mostly poor estimated numbers varying from ~300,000 to 600,000. Nobody on this world gets bothered with some thing that affects poor. Their votes during elections may be an exception. Coming back to point - on 11th March 2020, DG of WHO in his media briefing announced that the outbreak of Covid-19 has been characterized as a pandemic.

What is a Pandemic - According to CDC - "A Pandemic is a global outbreak of disease. Pandemics happen when a new virus emerges to infect people and can spread between people sustainably. Because there is little to no pre-existing immunity against the new virus, it spreads world wide." There have been pandemics before, common ones being Cholera, Influenza, Smallpox, Measles, Tuberculosis, Leprosy & Malaria and there have been pandemics which have been ongoing currently such as HIV / AIDS. But use of the word was limited among health care and public health professionals. Covid-19 brought it in public lexicon.

Well, nothing much against rich and wealthy but isn't it unfortunate truth that matters of life and death for rich and wealthy receive disproportionate attention, resources and research than for poor people. I don't know if Darwin knew this. Just so that you may know, hundreds of children died in Bihar in Summer of 2019 due to outbreak of AES, a perfectly harmless disease otherwise in richer areas of the world.

Overflow of emotions is not good. Neither the rage against apathy during AES outbreak, nor the fear that declaration of covid-19 as a pandemic brought along. The declaration of covid-19 outbreak as a pandemic not only brought it into daily news but also created a sense of fear and panic in people around the world, including India, including Bihar - Yes that's where I was. 

But fear cannot hold human life for ransom. Governments around the world started taking measures to contain the spread, so did the Indian Government as well - travel advisory, flight cancellations, thermal screening at airports. The response from public had been mixed - some thought governments were panicking, at other places people went into frenzy. Stock markets and crude prices tumbled.

In an interesting turn of events, Israeli Prime Minister Mr. Netanyahu suggested to adopt Indian way of "Namaste" at press conference.

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu @netanyahu encourages Israelis to adopt the Indian way of greeting #Namaste at a press conference to mitigate the spread of #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/gtSKzBDjl4

— India in Israel (@indemtel) March 4, 2020

That's Indian soft power. Wish we could have really leveraged it.

Thankfully in India we have a Prime Minister who is not just a good administrator but also a good orator. SHRI NARENDRA BHAI MODI JEE. So Modi jee made a clarion call to the people in India and people responded.

More to come.