If Not Now, When?

As the country and its healthcare infrastructure reels from its biggest public-health crisis, what can we do?

- Kalpish Ratna

Omnishambles. That is the only word for COVID India 2021. There is no point in stating the obvious, so I’ll pitch my voice above the panic and chaos to ask: What will we do about it?

A replay of 2020 just won’t work. Our strategy last year, like the rest of the world’s, was along trusted lines of quarantine and isolation. Trusted, that is, to fail. It could not, would not and did not contain a respiratory virus in 2020—just like it could not, would not and did not contain the Black Death in 1385, when this hoary strategy was thought up. Yes, travel is faster in the 21st century than it was in the 14th, but there is more than that to account for the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2. It is worth looking at these hidden factors now, and to find ways to redress them. The past year proved how useless our efforts to contain this disease have been. Isn’t it time for ingenious innovation?

The terms ‘virus’ and ‘disease’ are not synonyms. But in common parlance, they are confusingly interchangeable. Viruses are ubiquitous, and it is naïve to suppose that you can block them out. It is impossible to contain a virus. It is, however, very possible to contain the disease.

The disease is our response to infection by the virus. Infection can pass unnoticed. COVID jargon has bilked us from understanding its vocabulary.

We declaim in airy terms like ‘waves’ and ‘curves’ but refuse to admit how predictions all through 2020 fell flat. They were based on a presumed knowledge of the dynamics of this disease. A hollow presumption, as we are only now beginning to understand how this disease works.