WAR ON CORONAVIRUS
the world over is going on now. We humans have been coexisting
with lakhs of viruses all along, but some virulent ones played havoc with our
lives. For example, Influenza is attributed to the work of a virus - the 1918
Spanish Flu had taken crores of lives all over the world [>1.5 crores in our country alone]. Earlier to that we were struck by Bubonic
Plague in which also millions died; the arbitrary and cruel plague control
measures by the British colonialists had even led to counter attacks by extremist
nationalists [e.g. Chapekar Brothers] during 1897-99. In the recent past, we had HIV-AIDS,
then SARS-Swine Flu and Ebola etc. killing lakhs of people – starting from the
1980s. The current coronavirus began since November-December 2019 in Wuhan, China
it seems. But, suspicions as to whether from October 2019 itself it was there
in the US, and if that was due to bio-war experiments conducted in the US Labs,
later outsourced to the Wuhan Lab, also exist. Whatever it be, China imposed a
very rigid lockdown in January 2020 in the entire Hubei province (capital Wuhan), also speedily built several hospitals and, mobilizing the health staff
and medical resources of the entire country, has been able to contain it by
now. The genome details, the danger of human to human transmission and the asymptomatic, highly contagious nature of the disease were quickly communicated to WHO when it declared a world
health emergency on 30 January 2020 concerning this ‘2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease’; later it was named COVID-19 and declared a pandemic. The European countries and the US did not yet wake
up and so are horribly suffering now with the attacks of COVID-19 in gargantuan
proportions. Luckily, we Indians have taken to a nation-wide lockdown from 24
March, a bit belatedly though, which has helped us reduce the speed of the spread
considerably. However, the lack of adequate prearrangements, prevalence of reckless
orthodoxy [e.g. Tabligh Jamaat
related spread], rumours and stupidity [e.g.
migrant labour exoduses] have become main hurdles. Anyway,
lockdowns can only limit the spread. We need to take feverish measures for the cure
and eradication of the disease, for raising the civic consciousness, and helping
the economically and socially most suffering sections with a wide range of
workable schemes/measures; especially supply at cheap rates, or even free of
cost, of masks to the people and PPE kits to the doctors, nurses and other paramedical
medical staff, as also to other civic staff, is a MUST. Perhaps we have to live with this disease for a long time to come,
pending invention of the right cures and creation of a scientific spirited, hygienic
and enviro-friendly climate all over the country, but we have to march in
earnest and unitedly to reach that goal. §§§
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