The second wave of Covid has hit India more like a tsunami, with a deadly toll. Much has been written on what is going wrong. Here are some...
The second wave of Covid has hit India more like a tsunami, with a deadly toll. Much has been written on what is going wrong. Here are some ways we make the best of the crisis we are facing.
1. The lethality of the new strain needs to be conveyed: Covid-inappropriate behavior was widely persistent across the country until February, when the numbers of cases were low. The Bihar elections, the winter wedding season, the farmers’ ptoests and other potential superspreader events did not cause much of an upstroke in Covid cases.
The main difference between then and now is the presence of more infectious variant strains, which when coupled with the complacent public behavior triggered this massive wave. This also explains why Maharashtra has been worst hit, as the B.1.617 double mutant strain probably originated in Maharashtra.
The UK experience had already showed us how more infectious strains may initially appear equally or less lethal, but eventually end up killing more people as the health system gets stretched. Yet we committed the same mistake, repeatedly mentioning on all news outlets that the newer variants are less lethal.
This made the public and the authorities remain complacent at a time when pulling up our socks and carrying out...
