India And Coronavirus Catastrophe

Two months have passed after the lock down as a result of Corona Virus (Covid 19). On one hand the political agenda has given birth to a debate on whether India should have gone ahead with lock down or not? On the other hand questions are being raised on the timing and preparedness required before putting the nation under lock down. Both these questions have a common answer in the fact that catastrophes and calamities are not planned activities and hence the response actions and planning will go hand in glove with each other and is in essence a trade-off between economy, loss of life, preparedness in both logistics and medical facilities and the speed of onset of the calamity in all kind of likely scenarios emanating from the nation’s understanding and response to the problem.

        All analysis of the problem, be it by Polity and Political analysts, Economists, Journalists, Industrialists and Intelligentsia has been done keeping in view one’s own self interest, hidden agenda and selfish motivations and fails to give a rational and unbiased assessment to a normal citizen.

       It is a well known that corona virus infected patients grow rapidly and exponentially. In the light of unfortunate fact that neither a cure nor a vaccine is available to mankind at this juncture, the only plausible solution at this is to slow down the growth chain and break it if possible, much like a nuclear reaction is controlled in an atomic power plant by removing/absorbing a large a large number of neutrons from the chain fission reaction, thus avoiding the catastrophe of a nuclear bomb explosion.This controlling/ breaking down the chain required an imposition of a complete lock down on all kind of activity along with building up an infrastructure to help fight and control Corona virus on a war footing. The results of any delay and let up would have been as catastrophic as that of a nuclear explosion. While the nuclear explosion limits itself to a maximum radius of 100 Kms or so, Corona misfortune would have been on the national scale.
       The trade off available was very simple. A maximum of Rs. 15 to 20 lakh crore of GDP loss coupled with a lot of misery and sufferings to the poor masses or accepting  a potential of a couple of lakh deaths and a couple of million covid-19 patients with the level of infrastructure created today so painstakingly in the last 2 months and barely enough for maximum 2 lakh patients. The war would have neither been won nor finished after this. But I can venture out to say if there was no lock down from March, the exponential growth of corona virus patients and its collateral damage effects on industry, commerce and services because of randomly falling sick of key workers, closing and sanitizing of premises, its demoralizing effect on business and workforce would have definitely led to an even greater exodus of workers ( Unplanned equally if not more ). And a completely haywire and directionless nation would have suffered many many times more.In case the nation went in for a lock down after giving a fortnight of preparation time as many have been professing, a sudden explosion of corona virus cases would have been simply unmanageable as has been seen in many advanced, educated, law abiding and prosperous nations. 

       Needless to emphasize that the social distancing, use of masks, soap and sanitizer, quarantine etc. are all containment efforts aiming at minimizing the loss and certainly not means of finding an end to the corona virus. The  finding out of a vaccine and achieving herd immunity can give a lot of respite and comfort to the global citizenry but in true sense the war shall be deemed to have won only after the humanity finds a cure to the disease..