Covid-19 crisis and turning of tables
The ongoing explosive outbreak of Covid-19 is bursting and splitting society like never before, turning many a table upside down. The reassuring and comforting words of leaders emanating from the TV channels that 80% of those infected will have mild or no symptoms, and only 5-10 % need to be wary, are not sounding soothing anymore.
People are increasingly witnessing someone they “knew” who had coronavirus and fell unluckily into the wrong basket of 5% or even made it into the unfortunate ditch of 2.8% and died, and are beginning to ask, “How do I know which one I will fall into?”
Three months ago, we were hailing the South Korean model of testing, testing and testing and believed that an early answer to “Do I have Covid?” would control the spread. We even had examples where over 150 people who attended a “party” where only one symptomatic attendee had been positive, were all tested and quarantined.
Two months down we are now been given to understand that “early detection” with testing, contact tracing and confinement is a thing of the past. The present strategy is that testing should be restricted to only those who are symptomatic. There is no need for strict quarantines or confinement of infected individuals anymore, and “stay at home” approach for those without serious symptoms work.
According to the changing rules, any doctor advising testing of “exposed” or mildly symptomatic individuals is today liable to be admonished, and laboratories doing the test can be punished. I wonder what happened to the statistics that 80% of those infected have mild or no symptoms. Which one should we believe? And for how long?
For governments and health care providers, the worst nightmare has begun to unfold. The infection that was initially confined to cities and big towns, as it had obviously travelled in from overseas, has now reached and started spreading like wild fire in the pristine hinterland of villages and towns. It is creating horror stories of homesick desperate migrants who have braved hunger and heat and struggled and over hundreds of kilometers with children in their arms and belonging on their heads to reach their heavenly abode to see the doors shut on them as “outsiders” bringing infection home!
The central leadership which had initiated the national lockdown in March seems to have recently realized that “health” and Covid care are state subjects after all, and abdicated the role of managing the busting number of cases to states. Hospitals in cities and towns, where patients gravitate in need, are therefore beginning to overflow with patients, sending administrators (leaders) scrambling to regulate the turmoil with a flurry of orders and threats.
What is posing to be an increasing challenge is how to tame the numbers and the relentlessly rising curve. And every decision maker is at his wit’s end exploring varying strategies in a desperate attempt to derive less unpleasant figures.