HOW INDIA COULD HAVE AVOIDED THE UNWARRANTED CORONAVIRUS ATTACKS ON DOCTORS, POLICE STAFF, AND OTHER COVID-19 WARRIORS!
They still can; we are in the middle of the pandemic!
To identify, isolate, quarantine, and treat is the correct and most effective medical approach to, at the soonest, sail over the ongoing killer Coronavirus phase, with as little casualties sustained, and the government is doing just that.
However, had the government gone about the same in a slightly different manner, by approaching the novel Coronavirus novelly–by reading the common Indian’s psychology beforehand–they could have avoided the violence and rage that now spews out of people’s hearts as those affected mindlessly attack helping doctors, police staff, and other Covid-19 warriors–I bring your notice to the brutal incidents that have taken place over the past month in Indore, Moradabad, Bihar, Karnataka, Mumbai, Rajasthan, Punjab, Hyderabad, and the certain future ones to come!
Note: Most attacks have taken place in Muslim communities when doctors and police staff had been to areas with reported Coronavirus infections to check on affected Muslim patients, to shift them from their residences to quarantine zones.
And this isn’t because of one but several unfortunate HINDU-MUSLIM issues that have taken place in India, especially over the past 20–30 years which have etched indelible memories of fear in the minds of the present Indian generation.
To add, inflammatory messages circulating on social media apps that broadcast looming doomsday for Muslims only stoke the fire, for such anti-social messages are messing with gullible minds by the thousands that haven’t yet heard the term — NSA, or the National Security Act!
We aren’t new to false rumor spreaders or time-wasting dissidents of the country, those that hate the overall unity they see and try upsetting the balance as and when an opportunity arises.
Only, we would have moved across these trying times without the several ugly incidents of attacks that sadly took place, had we adopted a few wise measures; I repeat, by reading the common Indian’s psychology.
The underlined would have led to peaceful lockdown phases & their extensions.
#1 LOCKDOWN:
At the very outset, the government should have clarified that the lockdown period would start within 72 hours of their having decided & announced the same. This would have given enough time to the migrant laborers, and those stranded others from any part of the country, to get to their respective homes with no hitches.
A 72-hour period would have more than sufficed. This was within the government’s power, and this did not happen.
#2 TRANSPORTATION:
Like how the government has routinely and since years permitted special shuttle trains to ferry our military personnel from one end of the country to the other, they should have committed to free trains for the migrant workers to get to their locations for those 72 hours.
This was within the government’s power, and this did not happen.
#3 QUARANTINE:
To drag infected people from their houses and take them to specific government-run quarantine centers in a country with its given history of HINDU-MUSLIM hatred is not a prudent thing to do. Again, psychology.
We all know how easy it is to spread false news on social media, and mischief-mongers today have aptly misused the loopholes they found in the government’s decision to set up isolated quarantine centers, away from the patients’ spaces and far from their dear ones, thus the latter’s unfound fears and their following violent effects.
- The government should have adopted a friendly, elder-brotherly approach by encouraging those symptomatic to come forward to hospitals to get tested, then follow home quarantine procedures, with the ‘quarantined’ sticker stuck outside the concerned one’s house.
In a country where the commoner commonly goes to the local doctor for something as small as a common cold, or an indigestion issue; I’m a doctor, a Naturopath, and can vouch for this; do you really think a person facing sudden, acute shortness of breath, accompanied by an elevated temperature, along with other going weakening symptoms wouldn’t rush to their doctor? Far from it.
- The government should have worked closely with the local departments in ensuring essential supplies reached the houses of the infected, an easy task once the latter stepped forward.
- The government should have arranged for domestic and routine commodities to reach the doorsteps of every Indian until the lockdown phase ended, which again wasn’t too difficult a task to execute had they roped in experts like Amazon and other online businesses with existing transportation and door-to-door delivery set-ups across the country, besides organizing their own.
- Then, to stop the spread of the virus, the government should have imposed a complete curfew in the country, like they’ve done now, albeit with belligerent public rebelling all over the Nation, but given shoot-at-sight orders to fire ‘only below the knees’ at those loitering outside and breaking the law, then file stringent cases against the law-breakers, including imprisonment. And obviously, to have done the same only after having adhered to the preceding steps.
This was within the government’s power, but this did not happen.
Had all this but happened, the migrant workers would have got back home.
The gullible ones would not have fallen for the false social media messages; there would have been none in the first place; which made them senselessly attack the doctors, nurses, and police staff who were present to help them, thus invite NSA slapped on each albeit without knowing its meaning.
The rest of the citizens’ requirements would have got fulfilled even as they sat at home to proudly watch their PM address the Nation to update us every week.
Health workers, police staff, and other humanitarian personnel would not have needed to step outside their homes fearing for their lives each day, like they now do every day, for none knows when an infected party might turn crazy and get at them only because some malicious idiot spread rumors aimed at starting a not in the least wanted HINDU-MUSLIM altercation at this point!
#4 ACTUAL CONDITIONS OF QUARANTINE CENTERS:
Yes, India is a developing Nation, and we, the citizens, understand that.
As much as the government says it is trying to do all it can to uplift the Nation, and as much as its efforts are on, no denying, and with whatever they have on the plate to show, the key factor above all else today is that the Coronavirus is no common cold doing its routine seasonal bouts for the government ‘to keep trying’. Sorry, respected rulers of the land! The time calls for do or die!
Here is a virus that has already sent over 150,000 people around the globe to their untimely graves, and going strong. It is an abominably lethal pathogen that has suddenly sprung upon us and brought the lives of the yet living to a full stop!
It demands different handling because it takes more of a mental toll on the sufferer than a physical one!
Please understand, those getting affected by the Coronavirus, because of its novelty, are not ready for what’s hitting them, and this, as seen over the past month-and-a-half, is leading to radical mental issues all over!
You don’t huddle mentally weakened people who are scared out of their wits and are suffering from something like the Coronavirus into make-shift railway bogies, with a gap lesser than two-feet between paltry 5-foot long seats converted to beds while admitting such patients, then give them four toilets to share among six dozen of them inside the bogie! It is inhuman.
A question, please, to my beloved elders who rule India today.
God forbid if one among you were to get infected by the Coronavirus; Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of UK, did; would you get yourself admitted to one of your railway bogies, to quarantine yourself there for 14 days, maybe longer? Or would you head to one of the several crowded quarantine centers with over twenty patients crammed in a room?
I’m sure every Indian reading this would agree with me if I said you, our respected leaders of India, most definitely would not choose a railway bogie to quarantine yourself.
The least you would expect, if you were to suffer from Coronavirus, was a room to yourself, and one with a private toilet that would only make medical sense, for you would look to keep any variety of outside contamination at bay, and a toilet used by dozens of people would certainly pose big-time outside contamination threats! Don’t public toilets do?
Why would each of the patients not want a room for themselves? Is it too much for a Coronavirus patient to ask?
And please, before you bring on your seasoned political smirks at my supposedly naïve asks, let me make it plain I neither expect nor petition the government to go about organizing centrally air-conditioned individual high-rise swedes for the affected, sporting a Jacuzzi beside their crap-pads.
But please don’t send the patients for a fortnight or longer into railway bogies or to crowded recovery sanatoriums, with a couple toilets for a couple dozen patients or more.
Had the government, at the very outset, adopted the above home quarantine method as humbly suggested, with the enlisted stringent measures strictly adhered to, they would not have wasted several lakhs of rupees of the tax-payer’s money, then their official resources (both human and utility), and then the time they spent on erecting such insanitary quarantine facilities. Instead, they would have happily monitored the sufferers recovering at home.
This would have meant peaceful recoveries in the private spaces of the patients’ homes even as they stayed indoors reassured, surrounded by their mostly infected families giving them ‘recovery company’ for the allotted days; a mental satisfaction unto all at home; and with personal toilets to use, any day a better, safer, and far more hygienic option than the present isolation set-ups provided to Coronavirus patients by the government.
To consider the other as one’s own, and to do unto them as we’d do unto our near ones, or unto ourselves, is being human.
Here’s some wishful food for thought for all you indefatigable optimists like me out there!
Imagine for a second how things would have turned had our government done what they’ve so far done in setting up quarantine centers across the country, only gone about the same by erecting dedicated 5-Star quarantine & isolation set-ups in place of the railway bogies, or in place of the other hospitals or temporarily converted seclusion zones with twenty or more beds in a room.
The patients wouldn’t stay cooped in spaces with single beds lesser than two feet from each!
I see nothing wrong with the lower blue-collared class getting to live life King-Size, at least when they’re Coronavirus affected. It would be the tax-payer’s money, well spent.
And with our Film & Business Industry big-wigs having pledged over 5,000 Crores, or 653,616,000 US$, to the PM Cares Fund in the last fortnight alone, would it be difficult for the government to treat everyone like, well, we would all like to be treated, if indeed the leader among our respected elders was to read this and take a call? Why not?
