Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally told the nation something that would have been good to hear a month or more back.
He said “Friends, experts and scientists have pointed out that corona will remain a part of our lives for a long time. But at the same time, we cannot allow our lives to only be confined to corona. We should wear masks, follow social distancing and pursue our goals.”
Unfortunately, until this point we have treated corona as an enemy that had to be defeated, drummed out of India, its tail between its legs. When Mr Modi asked Indians to bang pots and pans to thank doctors and medical staff fighting against corona, his more ardent supporters claimed the sound waves would dispel the virus. When the Prime Minister asked us to light diyas for 9 minutes from 9pm, a slew of WhatsApp messages insisted that thanks to the heat generated corona would die at 9.09pm that Sunday. There have been many Sundays since then. Covid-19 is very much around and the Prime Minister is talking about Lockdown IV.
Of course deep down we all knew the virus would not obey our lockdown calendar. The lockdown was not a silver bullet. It bought medical facilities time. It allowed India to ramp up on its supplies of PPE kits and N95 masks. But it was a wasted opportunity in terms of teaching us how to live in a post-lockdown world where Covid-19 would still be a reality, undeterred by the sound and light show of the bartan orchestra and candlelight vigils. “In these flu-like epidemics there is a huge wave and then it lingers on for years together,” says Dr Pratima Murthy, head of psychiatry at NIMHANS. “So I think we need to adjust to a life where we manage ourselves in a sensible manner but we go about our work.” That messaging that would have gone a long way in reassuring an anxious citizenry that it is possible to navigate a normal world where we get our root canals done and our plumbing fixed and meet a friend despite Covid. And a Covid diagnosis should not mean neighbourhood panic and instant stigma.
Rarely has a government had our collective attention as completely as it did during the long weeks of this lockdown. If Indians had emerged from the lockdown knowing how to wear and wash a mask properly that would have been time well-spent. If we had been given clear messaging about how to sanitise vegetables we bought at the bazaar that would have been useful. If we had been taught a basic “sanitisation drill” to follow when we return from work that would have been reassuring. A lot of our anxiety around Covid-19 stems from the fact that we do not understand what we need to do to keep our families safe. We are petrified that we will inadvertently bring the virus home in a post-lockdown world. And while politicians talk about defeating the virus, the rest of us are scouring survival tips from WhatsApp University. Someone is sunning their newspapers all day. Someone is scrubbing vegetables with Vim bars. Someone is spraying eau de cologne on currency notes. Someone is swearing by gaumutra as a Covid-blocker. And then there are thousands of Indians crammed in the back of trucks, just trying to get back home, handkerchiefs around their faces — a threadbare defense against a virulent pandemic.
This could have been the time for the government to try and get out messaging that answered these questions, lessened the stigma around those testing positive or at least kicked off these conversations. Instead we rained flower petals from fighter jets. Now Covid looms beyond the lockdown like the undead.
The tragedy is that in an era of strongmen leaders around the world, we only seem to understand a war metaphor when it comes to confronting great challenges. But Covid-19 is not Pakistan, an old enemy to be vanquished. We might want to think of a pandemic as a World War but there will be no Treaty of Versailles that will mark the end of the lockdown. One day hopefully there will be a vaccine or herd immunity. But WHO emergencies director Dr Mike Ryan warns that the virus “may never go away” just as measles persists despite a vaccine. “HIV has not gone away — but we have come to terms with the virus,” he says. We don’t have to win the war against Covid as much as we need to learn to make peace with its existence in our world for now. It might help to remember what Leo Tolstoy wrote: “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” The name of the book? War and Peace.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
"make" - Google News
May 17, 2020 at 08:00AM
https://ift.tt/368fCJi
We don’t have to defeat Covid, we need to make peace with it - Economic Times
"make" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2WG7dIG
https://ift.tt/2z10xgv
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "We don’t have to defeat Covid, we need to make peace with it - Economic Times"
Post a Comment