If conundrum is a confusing and difficult problem,Covid 19 can certainly be called a conundrum. Humanity has not come across such squeezing times,at least during the past one hundred years.The origin of this mind boggling virus,the intensity of its wield and spread,the explosion of its unpredicatable mutations,the scientific and medical confusions throughout the globe,over the design and danger of its variants and above all,the reliability of the preventive power of the vaccines floated in the medical market, are all contributing to the formation of an inextricable web of this conundrum.
In December 2019,when there were early news columns and media megabytes about the corona virus,it was seen and heard as a distant and isolated occurrence,not to knock at each one's doors and hence not to be bothered about.In fact,many of us thought that it would be like any other type of flu and go away after some time,without harming lives.
But the starting months of 2020, turned those beliefs upside down,by actual happenings of unprecedented loss of lives in bunches,reported from the most developed countries.Even then,many Indians thought that India being a haven for large scale pollution, unhealthy habits and unclean routines, it would be able to 'accommodate'the virus comfortably as another guest,to become part of the Indian herd composition. Moreover, with frequent bouts of dengue,swine flu,avian flu and other periodical infections,we thought, we could casually bypass the new pandemic,with our illusory faith in herd immunity.But all such beliefs were brutally disproved.
Unlike other countries,India is a soil of specialists in home remedies.In a land of an ill famous health care system,everyone became a doctor and whatsapp messages were flooded with home remedies haunting the imagination of everybody,in their own mind mould.But home remedies could not halt the'pan india programme'of the pandemic.
The world was totally dismayed by a pall of gloom.Science and its child called medicine,had little time even to blink in the darkness.Confusion has the capacity to spread faster,than the source that causes it.But science and medicine had to do their best,towards throwing at least a patch of light,in the midst of the pitch dark situation.
Like the French Revolution that coined the three dynamic slogans'Libery Fraternity and Equality',the global health care system came out with the three slogans:-'Masks! Social Distance!& Hand Wash.As slogans had to explain themselves,they began to expand into questions such as,What type of mask?Surgical mask?N95? or ordinary mask made of cloth?How much of distance?One meter or two meters?What kind of hand wash?Alcoholic or soap like?and so on.The arguments continued.But there was at least an ignition,to kickstart the battle against a notorious virus.
Soon it became a rough and tumble, marking the beginning of a bundle of conflicting observations, views and predictions on a daily basis.From infection to hospitalisation, from treatment to recovery,or death and from patient discharge manual to disposal of bodies of victims,everything was subjected to pressures of conflicts and controversies. People would not bother to wear masks or observe social distance norms.But they would question and oppose the burial or cremation of covid victims,in spots nearer to their living locations.For the medicos and the frontline workers, every day began like a horror film and ended as a nightmare.
Besides the kickstart slogans,new protective protocols were evolved unnerving the medical blocks,by pushing them into suffocating,personal protective equipment,for treating the covid ridden crowds.They had to strive day and night,towards saving lives, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.This sordid state of affairs continues even now, as an endless saga of suffering and sacrifice.The initial confusion regarding the credibility of Covid testing norms,added to the worries of the medical and para medical staff.Luckily,the Polymerase Chain Reaction{PCR}Test came to be accepted as one of the immediately possible testing devices,to trace the presence of the virus in a human body.
Consequent upon this gruesome conundrum,statistics had to break its heads to arrive at acceptable pieces of information regarding numbers.The number game revolved around the total number of cases affected, hospitalised,treated,recovered and those,succumbed to the disease.In between came,episodes of paucity of beds in hospitals and unfair distribution of oxygen.Here,the supply chain section had to face the hurdles and give a semblance of actual numbers of all kinds.
Whoever is at the helm of affairs, whichever political group wears the mantle of governance,they have to bear the brunt and face brickbats in such a choking situation. As blaming is easier than governance,blame game would keep echoing its voice against the ruling dispensation.Humanity survives mostly on account of human activism.It is the human activists to whichever field or career they belong,have carried on their shoulders,the biggest crusade againt the worst scenario,which is being witnessed from the first day of alarm bells,that started ringing from Wuhan.
How many countries are struggling to meet the eventualities of the Covid onslaught and in how many different ways they are doing it,to sustain their economy,with fears of the virus modifying its hit and hide,or hide and hit diabolism.Every country has its own model of economy to suit its geographical and social needs and every model of economy,depends upon the type of governance and the type of people governed.
Closure of borders and lockdown serials have crippled not only human mobility but also pulled down the shutters,on day to day business and livelihood.While the organized sectors have been struggling to make both ends meet,the unorganized sector has been humbled to the core.Many would have thought that living at the mercy of death,is worse than dying.
Though travel has been holding its breath for an early comeback,tourism is at the edge of a collapse.School going children have lost the glory of real life learning and the joy of interpersonal gusto.It is like a'home alone'situation for a budding generation. Teenagers bound for higher education,are at the lowest ebb of their waving energy, because of the wave series,of a dirty virus.But as a blessing in disguise,many have passed out their academic programme without passing through the regular evaluation process.
Food industry is time and again losing its fascination for taste,on account of its vacant dining tables and wailing vessels missing the warmth of service.Food has begun to travel homeward,than people visiting restaurants.Salons and beauty parlours have gone bereft of beauty.Job losses have jeapardised the lives of a vast section of daily wage earners and salaried men and women.Online jobs and the 'work from home' syndrome have enforced a robotic existence on a lot of professionals.
Religion has been frequently going indoors,in worship places and God is enjoying the entire dance of a man made disaster,stunning mankind with a reflexive blow.Burials and burning pyres have been the hightlights of the pandemic,that poked its perilous head.Perhaps the blessed beings during this horrid season are the new borns, the toddlers and the senior citizens, because one group can wait to see life,while the other has seen enough of it.For all the others,it is a mechanical deletion of daily sheets from Time's calendar.
Nevertheless,the world has to carry on the prioritised global and local activities with its inbuilt rescilience and 'march on' spirit.This has been evident through most human activities, including space trips and sports events. regular Cricket and Soccer matches, the just concluded Wimbleton Championship and the ongoing Olympic events in Tokyo,are enough to prove that mankind cannot be dispirited by any disaster,however big it may be.
Every sensible individual knows that the Covid conundrum is not yet over. Nobody knows when it will be over. Trial and error fighting prescriptions will continue. Vaccination is viewed to be the closest control mechanism. People around the world should give up their belligerent attitudes against masks,social distancing and vaccines and cooperate, by protecting themselves as per guidelines,so that others are allowed to protect themselves.
Politics is still sitting on its ivory tower,looking exotically at the fluid turn of newer variants and fresher battling modes,against those variants. Science has its field day with diverse reports on the mutation probabailities of Covid 19 and their infection potentialities,of course with their own disclaimers.One thing is very clear. There is a lot to infer about the clandestine origin of the demon called Corona and the hardly transparent systems that have been handling it.It is these unanswerable inferences and the complicated world view of the weird virus,that constitute the crux of the Covid 19 conundrum.
P.Chandrasekaran.
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