Plagues have afflicted us humans for thousands of year. They have wiped out civilisations and changed the course of our history. It is assumed that both Greek and Roman civilisations petered out after repeated attack of such plagues. Aztec and Mayan civilisation were wiped out not by the invaders but by the killer plague that accompanied them.
The dictionary meaning of plague is any epidemic disease that develops and spreads rapidly. Medically speaking, only respiratory epidemics are capable of such wide and devastating spread in a short time. Though the disease Plague is referred only to a pneumonia caused by Yersinia Pestis in medical jargon.
webster dictionary
The pandemic hit the world when I had only 3 years left in a government service that caters to the health of a very advanced cohort under Government of India. The initial reaction was that of extreme shock and disbelief. I was assigned the job of a nodal officer for the pandemic for my hospital. Thus I had a ringside view of a Frankenstein unfolding. And I will divide my impressions into 3 parts..
- 2020- The Year of Disbelief and Despair
- 2021 – From Despair to Hope. ( from plunging economy to Vaccines and Herd immunity)
- 2022- From Hope to the “I don’t Care” attitude. ( History repeats itself because man makes the same mistake.)
6 months into the pandemic, the daily confirmed cases of India were below 10000. That was June 2020. The day it touched 5 figures, there was widespread panic and paranoia. Whichever channel you tuned in, the screen would monotonously crunch numbers of new cases on that day. People stayed indoors and stopped visiting neighbours. Guests were not welcome. Friends and acquaintances were assiduously discouraged. Currency notes became untouchable. What to do with vegetables and groceries ? Eateries were summarily closed all over. Servants and drivers were banned. Personal kitchen at home got busy.
Screaming headlines popped up from every corner- 10000 today! 50000 is not far. Yes 50,000/day was an unbelievable figure in June. Then we clocked one lakh new cases a day in September. It was accepted stoically without raised eyebrows.
Fast forward to 2021. Today we have 10000 cases every day. No panic. Medias don’t bother about these figures.
Back to 2020. Rumours were spreading fast in social media like wildfire. Even the news and print media had joined the bandwagon. Markets were closed. Schools, hostels closed sine die. All form of public gatherings, offices, parks, movie halls, prayer places were shut down. Roads were totally deserted, except few ambulances scurrying past. Only police personnel were seen around. In the pandemic, the police department suffered maximum casualties second only to health people.
History teaches us that, in pandemics througout ages there always is an exodus from cities to villages. All forms of transport system were closed : air, rail and road. States simply closed their borders on neighbouring states. Yet millions of Indians walked the country from east to west, north to south on bare foot. Manufacturing stopped. Jobs simply vanished. The economy plunged.
( Throughout history, massive Plagues are seen to bring in all around depression. Economic, entrepreneurial, psychological. People become risk averse. Instead they became extra religious, more spend thrift. But for how long? Then the whole process reverses. Post pandemic, in the roaring twenties ( 1920s after the Spanish Flu) people started splurging all around trying to forget the pandemic as a bad dream. It is over.)
To be continued…
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 