Corona Crisis: Its time now to change our strategy

When we do something challenging something difficult and it seems to be working, isn’t our inclination to keep on doing it again and again and this is the general human temptation. But I am going to argue against it with facts and figures. So if we look at data right now, it is quite clear that the nationwide lockdown has worked, India’s case doubling rate has decreased to 11-12 days depending on how we calculate, when it started it was just 2- 3 days that is March 23rd, cases were going up very fast.

Now if we have come here what is the hesitation from changing this? The normal human psychology is “if it’s not broken, why mend it?”
We have understand the fact that very few people can endure the lockdown further, maybe 10% can endure it, and may be 2% can actually enjoy it by posting pictures of the recipes we are cooking and posting pictures of the Netflix shows we are watching but a vast majority of the people living in India this lockdown destroys their lives and livelihood , so time might have come now to look at the next steps.

So, what are doubts there?
1st that we are testing too little? Alright no country is testing enough, New York is testing as much as whole of India but still they think they are not testing enough so there is no definition of what is enough, but the fact is India is now testing on a average of 40000 a day and this is up 10 times from where we were less than a month ago so testing rate has gone up they will go further up.

Important thing that we have to look here is Test positivity rates, until about a week back India’s test positivity rate was at 4.7% and it was said that India is conducting too few tests but now the number of tests has gone up but the test positivity rate has actually gone down to 4.1% which might not be significant statistically but we can easily conclude that even when number of tests done per day has increased exponentially the test positivity rate has remained consistent since the time we started testing a significant number of people.

The 2nd doubt is that deaths are being over looked but in todays India its very difficult for lots and lots of people to die and not get noticed. Even when reports are coming from west Bengal that when central authorities went there and asked tough questions, they increased their death by 4 times but the 4 times was 17 to 57, so the fact is a few number of deaths might not get reported but a large number of death going unreported is impossible.

Next is the most important hesitation to any opening of the country, which is the fear of the unknown and that fear has gone up to the level of psychosis  and its coming mostly from our social and economic elites, as they find themselves safe and secure inside the luxury of their own houses and they see that they can survive the lockdown quite nicely with their “work from home”, “Netflix” and social media.

They can get their necessities from “Big basket” or whatever e commerce platform of their preference, while the others can suffer for some more time, and this time is infinite as all the scientists around the world agree on one point that a vaccine is almost a year away, and its impossible to live inside our fortified trenches for a year. This country has to think about opening up.

The middle class or the upper-class who find themselves at a safer position if the lockdown continues for an extended time they must look into the economic impact of the lockdown as this is going to affect them too. Markets are falling due to economic slowdown and markets are going to punish them for being so bull-headed that is following one strategy continuously because it has worked, as markets don’t listen to anybody’s “mann ki baat”.

Next question is if India has to open up or not what strategy should we follow, which formula will work. No country can actually give us a formula which will work we have devise our own.

Now if we take a look at, he fatality rates from covid19 and compare it with some 1st world countries with extra ordinary medical infrastructure, the results are quire surprising.

Sweden, which is the ultimate socialist state, the ultimate welfare utopia where no private healthcare exists ad the public sector healthcare is phenomenal has a fatality rate of 197/million Germany has 67/million, The US at 152/million, Finland at 177/million, Spain, Italy and The UK at 496,443 and 311/million respectively but India’s fatality rate is only at 0.65/million which is extremely low and we are at a much better position in comparison to other countries.

This is the reality right now in India so either we can imagine a much worse reality and remain frozen or we can take reality as it is and respond accordingly and prepare and equip ourselves if things get worse.

Now if we look at some state wise data we can see that 7 states (UP, Tamil Nadu ,MP, Rajasthan, Delhi, Gujrat and Maharashtra) accounts for 5% or more any COVID19 cases in India, 3 states(West Bengal, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) accounts for 2%-4% COVID cases, 5 states( Haryana, Punjab, J&K, Karnataka and karela) accounts for 1%-2% cases and rest 17 states accounts for less then 1% cases per state.

So, my question is where is the need for keeping these states under lockdown.

-Hanif Mohammad Mustakim
Hanif is media student enthusiastic about creating an impact with his writing. He is a writer by day and a reader by night.