A LOOK AT CARONA FROM ANOTHER ANGLE
Perhaps, the world would have been betterplaced today ,if it would have decided to live with carona along with necessary personal safetyprecautions, instead of reacting with panic, as the world has been living with several other diseases.
By getting alarmed over carona, the disease has not been shunted out. The scientists across the world would have certainlycontinued the efforts to develop the drug to treat carona, irrespective of the level of alarm of the world community, just as the scientists have developed drugs to treat several otherdiseases in the past.
Now, let us see the comparative figures of damage caused by various diseases in recent times.In the year 2018, around 18 million people were affected by cancer and 10 million people died due to cancer in the world .(Source : W H O report)
Around 200 million people suffer frommalaria every year and one individual dies every 2 minute due to malaria in theworld. (Source : W H O report)
It is reported that around 60 millionpeople die every year due to old agediseases. Millions of deaths also occur due to several other reasons such aswar, accidents, suicides etc
.In the year 2020, upto 23rd June,2020 it is reported that around 9 million people have suffered from carona inthe world and around 0.45 million people have died due to carona .Amongst the dead , many people also have other ailments as well as old ageconditions resulting in poor immunity level.
Compared to the prevalence of severalother diseases and death due to such diseases and other reasons in the past year after year, the damagecaused by carona appears to be not really that alarming as it is made to look
.The important point to note is thatin the case of carona , the number of people who have recovered are far higherthan the number of people who have recovered from other diseases.Carona picture would look lessalarming, if the media would report only the percentage of people who haverecovered from carona and the number of people who have died. Repeatedlypointing out the number of people who have been affected from the beginning of carona (COVID 19 ) is purposeless, since more than 50% of them have recovered andothers under treatment process.
Therecovery rate is likely to further go up sharply in the coming days. Perhaps, the basic cause for concern amongstpeople is that the human endeavours have not succeeded so far in “conquering”carona. The ground reality is that so manyother diseases have not been conquered , though drugs have been developed. When the world has reconcileditself to other deadly diseases like cancer , why not have the same approach tocarona too ?
In the absence of drug for treatingcarona and lack of clarity as to why the virus happened and being convinced thatcarona is contagious, the world has come to the view correctly that social distancing and cleanliving style is the immediate remedy to confront carona. This is the right andappropriate approach. But, should this approach be continued endlessly ?
No doubt, people should be told as tohow they should safeguard themselvesagainst carona, as they are told about other diseases and then it should be left to the people to live with necessary safetyprecautions., as it is being done in thecase of other diseases. People would react to this approachof strongly advocating safety measures in much better way than whencompelled.
Perhaps, the social pressurewould make people to protect themselves much better than use of force by governmentagencies.
What is required is strong andcontinued proactive campaign against carona by the government and socialgroups, where those who do not observe social distancing would be looked uponas anti socials and not necessarily as law breakers and such anti socials wouldbe viewed and dealt accordingly by thepublic. Social pressure would build upon those who do not observe the cautionsand they would be made to behave.
It is necessary to transfer theresponsibility of observing caution to the people , which will yield muchbetter results.The compulsive methods to make peopleobserve social distance to prevent spread of carona is no more yielding the results, as it is seen from therising figures everyday, in spite of implementing lockdown.
It appears that thelaw of diminishing returns is proving itself. It is now three months, sinceimplementation of lockdown started in the world. How long it should continue?
'Of course, there are arguments that but for the lockdown, situation would havebeen worse. One really would not know . Have we not already given enough timefor the lockdown experiment?
N.S.Venkataraman
Nandini Voice for The Deprived
nandinivoice.com more