While there is an alarm­ing in­crease in the num­ber of COVID19 in­fec­tions, In­dia is open­ing up in a hurry that is not ex­plain­able, ex­cept that the gov­ern­ment now wants the ‘prob­lem of Coro­n­avirus and the at­tend­ing prob­lems of the coun­try to be out and done with’ notwith­stand­ing the short term and long term con­se­quences. Po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Ku­mar San­jay Singh warns that this can have dis­as­trous con­se­quences as seen in Swe­den. He ar­gues that the sit­u­a­tion can be saved by em­u­lat­ing the ex­am­ple of Greece.

INDIA IS OPEN­ING UP IN­SPITE OF ALARM­ING AC­CEL­ER­A­TION in the num­ber of covid19 in­fec­tions. The num­ber of deaths in the coun­try has also ac­cel­er­ated, with­out any ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse or con­cern by any gov­ern­ment or med­ical au­thor­ity.

The daily in­crease in the num­ber of new cases un­der­scores that gov­ern­ment re­lax­ations notwith­stand­ing, the con­ta­gion is un­re­lent­ing. It would be ad­vis­able, there­fore to fol­low re­straint and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. All nonessen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties such as din­ing out must be avoided.

Eu­rope which, be­fore be­ing re­placed by USA, was a global hotspot throws a spot­light on the fate that awaits us, de­pend­ing on the course of ac­tion to be adopted by our pol­icy for­mu­la­tors.

Sam­ple the di­verse al­ter­na­tives pre­sented by Swe­den and Greece sit­u­a­tions.

Swe­den, an ad­vo­cate of the con­cept of herd im­mu­nity, does not fol­low so­cial dis­tanc­ing, lock­down etc., and now has the high­est death rates in Eu­rope.  In con­trast, Greece, which is amongst the poor­est coun­tries of Eu­rope, has kept both the rate of in­fec­tions and deaths in check through lock­down (im­ple­mented as early as Feb­ru­ary), phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, and a ju­di­cious pro­gram of test­ing and trac­ing. The col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the med­ical fra­ter­nity and the gov­ern­ment has been im­mac­u­late and ex­cept in the refugee ar­eas, the coun­try has kept the deaths at the bare min­i­mum.

In coun­tries such as In­dia where per capita avail­abil­ity of doc­tors and hos­pi­tal beds are very low, hasty and hap­haz­ard open­ing up may have dis­as­trous con­se­quences, as even a slight spike in the num­ber of hos­pi­tal­iza­tions will over­whelm the med­ical fa­cil­i­ties.

In the Greek ex­am­ple, fi­nan­cial sac­ri­fice has been ac­cepted but the hu­man sac­ri­fice has been cur­tailed. In a way, this makes eco­nomic sense, since, in the cur­rent con­ta­gion-dri­ven re­ces­sion, the eco­nomic cri­sis has been trig­gered by a pub­lic health cri­sis. Ergo, eco­nomic suc­cess or fail­ure de­pends on the suc­cess or fail­ure of gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies on pub­lic health.

It seems that given the pe­cu­liar­ity and cau­sa­tion of the con­ta­gion-dri­ven re­ces­sion ad­vice of med­ical ex­perts would pro­vide the bul­wark for eco­nomic re­cov­ery.

This breeds mis­giv­ings on the sagac­ity of gov­ern­men­t’s de­ci­sion to open nonessen­tial ser­vices even in the red zones. Med­ical ex­perts have re­peat­edly un­der­scored the po­ten­tial of in­fec­tions while din­ing in restau­rants, vis­it­ing sa­lons, etc. It is alarm­ing that the hote­liers’ lobby is pur­su­ing zeal­ously to open their eater­ies.

The reser­va­tion that comes to mind af­ter read­ing this is that it leans heav­ily on the con­cept of herd im­mu­nity. This has failed in the case of covid19 where ex­po­sure to the virus leads to in­fec­tions and in cases hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death. High death rates in Swe­den demon­strates this.

In coun­tries such as In­dia where per capita avail­abil­ity of doc­tors and hos­pi­tal beds are very low, hasty and hap­haz­ard open­ing up may have dis­as­trous con­se­quences, as even a slight spike in the num­ber of hos­pi­tal­iza­tions will over­whelm the med­ical fa­cil­i­ties. In fact, this is al­ready hap­pen­ing but now is be­ing drowned in the hul­la­bal­loo of self-re­liance and ex­ag­ger­ated claims of re­lief ef­forts and data fudg­ing of the num­ber of covid19 re­lated deaths.

What could make the mat­ters worse is the in­abil­ity (due to poverty, etc.) of a large sec­tion of our pop­u­la­tion to ob­serve phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and use of face masks and other safety norms! The Greeks and the Tai­wanese demon­strated re­mark­able self-re­straint and self-im­posed dis­ci­pline and ac­cept­ing of norms an­nounced by gov­ern­men­tal and med­ical au­thor­i­ties.

The painful, hap­haz­ard, un­reg­u­lated, mer­ci­less move­ment of the poor mi­grant pop­u­la­tion from one part of nou­veau-riche In­dia to their own In­dia -the In­dia of their home and hearth is likely to add fur­ther fuel to the fire as no pre­cau­tions or sys­tems have in place to test the es­ti­mated 4 mil­lion mi­grant work­ers.

The painful, hap­haz­ard, un­reg­u­lated, mer­ci­less move­ment of the poor mi­grant pop­u­la­tion from one part of nou­veau-riche In­dia to their own In­dia -the In­dia of their home and hearth is likely to add fur­ther fuel to the fire as no pre­cau­tions or sys­tems have in place to test the es­ti­mated 4 mil­lion mi­grant work­ers.

The wages of this ill-ad­vised pol­icy are al­ready be­ing man­i­fest. Since open­ing up,  the num­ber of cases in dis­tricts and states that hith­erto had very few or no cases is now reg­is­ter­ing pos­i­tive cases. An alarm­ing de­vel­op­ment that has omi­nous por­tents for In­dia and In­di­ans.