[Sebring]

If I can answer from my personal experience, the lockdown put the fear of death in me. And hammered it in pretty hard. I really started to feel that if I'm careless I will lose my life. And that lesson is proving pretty handy. Venturing out, I might forget to wear my underwear but not my mask. Sanitizer is always close at hand. I wash my hands innumerable times. I'm not touching my face which I realize I used to do a lot in the past. We took calls that are deemed desperate, like relieving the maids, driver and househelps of their duties and doing everything ourselves. More automation has come in. I see fights/strong arguments in shops where a person has ventured very close. Lifts are another area where people maintain distance and don't cram, howsoever hurried they are. Spitting in public paces has stopped, lest a fight breaks out. So this awareness is going to help us moving forward as 'we Indians' take many things lightly and hide behind 'democracy'. We shall rebuild the economy, (May numbers look good for Maruti Suzuki at 18,000 plus units), but life gives us one shot

Originally Posted by ABHI_1512

So, what exactly has the lockdown achieved ??

[smooth indian]

Originally Posted by fordday

Thank you for the link.

From the article which says "Their actions in late January and early February were very much in advance of many other countries. And that was enormously helpful ... for them to be able to retain control."

Seems their early actions paid off well.
I don't remember specifics, but what was our official govt reactions to Covid19 in that time?

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

Namaste Trump

Both US and India were busy partying in Ahmedabad and Delhi. Didn't prepare at all. India bought some time using the lockdown. US, even the lockdown was too late there. Now US is leading, and India catching up, thanks to the ill timed lockdown relaxations.

The Namaste Trump event took place on Feb 23. The first case in India was detected on Jan 30 in Kerala. The WHO declared COVID a global epidemic on March 11. On March 11 India had less than 200 confirmed cases. By March 23 when the lockdown was announced the confirmed cases spiked up to more than 1000. It was during this period from March 11 to 23, that the govt really had to pay attention, consult experts and formulate a strategy. I am not sure the trump event is a factor here.
Lockdowns were proposed by WHO and enforced by govts around the world based on Dr Niel Ferguson's study and recommendations; There is now a legitimate dark cloud of doubt over the effectiveness of these recommendations.
There isn't really a clear case of the Modi govt being negligent. You might say clueless but baring Taiwan, Japan and South Korea (possibly North Korea as well), all other national govts were either in denial, were sleeping at the wheel or had no idea about what to make of the situation. The one aberration was Sweden which decided against lockdowns (perhaps for developing herd immunity) with only social distancing measures to follow. Does anyone think this would have gone smoothly in India?
There is not much merit in saying that the migrant workers should have allowed to go back home before the lockdown because no one can say confidently that that would have reduced the suffering. What if the ensuing rush had allowed the virus to spread more quickly to newer areas. Even now with more restricted movement there is a resurgence of cases in Kerala (where the situation was well in control with loud proclamations) because of a small but fresh lot of people arriving form Maharashtra and other states.
All in All I think this was an unprecedented situation where any formation in the govt (take your pick) would have found challenging.

[Amit_breakfree]

I fail to understand one point - why are we comparing ourselves to countries like Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea?

Just for the sake of numbers:
Population of Taiwan - 2.38 crore
Population of Japan - 12.65 crore
Population of New Zealand - 48.9 lakh
Population of South Korea - 5.16 crore
Total - 20.67 crore

Population of India - 136.26 crore

Only UP had a population of 19 crore in 2011 census and must be much higher by now. The steps which Taiwan/South Korea took will never work in India. Even if 1% of Indian population can be categorized into essential services then 1.36 crore people would have been doing their duty during the lockdown.

We are not self-disciplined like Japan, neither we are are authoritative regime like China where they can do anything according to their whims and fancies.

We have the benefit of hindsight and we can say that this thing could have been better or could have been managed better. Everyone agrees to it. There has been mistakes as this is once in a century event.

We should focus on what can be done and what is being done.

[swami69]

We all have our views !

Government was sleeping, they should have acted much earlier - If they had done this and opened the country earlier based on numbers, and then the cases increase somehow, then we will say, they went for a lock down too soon, the timing was not right and they did a blunder

Government should have moved the migrants back to their home and then should have gone for a lock down - We are talking about some 8Cr migrants and moving them. How long that would have taken ? Further when the government spells this plan - do we all think that the Migrants or anyone for that matter would have followed rules and wait for their turn to go home ? No way ! there would have been stampede across India

What are we, the people doing ? When the lock down was imposed, for the first couple of days, the Police was enforcing it very strictly and we saw various Videos - What did we all say ? Police Brutality on poor people. So, if they enforce, we blame the police and at the same time, we do not behave. In our country, only a small percentage literally obeys the law, the rest all are concerned first about them, their family and throw rules out of the park. Even, in our own apartment complex, when it comes to picking up delivery from the gate, they all rush as if there is no tomorrow !

With 60 days gone, the government has no more strength or ammunition to continue the lock down as many will become bankrupt and other forms of violence, unrest will start which will be worse than COVID.

While what the government did is always debatable and i too agree that they could have done this/that better, for this COVID, which is huge and no government has ever seen something like this, we should just appreciate our front line workers and do our thing of following the rules and law. If possible, advise others who do not follow and contribute our bit.

Swami

[NiInJa]

The situation where I stay in Pune is very good, people are taking good measures of social distancing etc. The Police station here organized a proper evacuation event for migrant labors last week with public buses arranged for them and there was no untoward incident. One thing to note is that the local Ganesh mandal members are volunteering in large numbers to put social distancing measures in place. Police force that was present in the first lockdown is almost non-existent now as they have been redirected to containment zones.

Most shops are now open till 2 p.m., autos are lined up and people are using them. I too take my car out for a drive as and when I get opportunity since I got it serviced last week. Of-course its all over and people are scarce after 4 p.m.

So far, things look optimistic here, people are managing better in a self controlled environment, also the number of people recovering are increasing day by day.

I can't comment on how state or central government would have done something better in the hindsight, but I am sure they have learnt a lot from this episode. Plus, I think its good that we imposed a complete lockdown in the initial stages. Those 30-40 days gave them time to set up protocols and measures depending on local conditions (i.e. Flattening the curve) I am not sure if we flattened the curve, but we definitely did not let it blow out of control. A few areas in Pune were completely recovered initially only on the basis of contact tracing, so that was not a complete failure.

Some of us above say that governments should have arranged for migrants' travelling first then imposed a complete lockdown. I think that would have created more problems to contain the spread, look at Goa and Kerala. They managed to recover initially and now are dealing with new cases again, if this would have happened in back in April, it would have compounded the already existing cases and tracing thousands of people arriving at a destination in a matter of days would have been almost impossible.

[vivek95]

Again, why are some of you surprised that Kerala and Goa have started witnessing a spike in cases after allowing migrants back home ?? What makes you feel that this super contagious virus which has spread far and wide ensuing community transmission long back, would disappear just like that. This will keep on repeating whether you open up the country today or after another year. This holds true for even New Zealand which has nearly eliminated the virus, as they claim.

Back in my hometown Belgaum, KA, all new cases are Mumbai returnees who are testing positive on 14th day of institutional quarantine. But they are all asymptomatic, don't require hospitalisation or any particular medicine, so why panic ??

When will the country realise, we don't have to worry about a pathogen which is causing less or no harm to a majority of the infected people. Wondering what if this was a Ebola pandemic !! Think people would have committed suicide right, left and centre out of fear.

[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by NiInJa

Most shops are now open till 2 p.m., autos are lined up and people are using them. I too take my car out for a drive as and when I get opportunity since I got it serviced last week. Of-course its all over and people are scarce after 4 p.m.
.

Pasting my own service experience from Maruti Ertiga review thread here:

"Coming to the precautions they took:
1. Very less people working at the dealership so no overcrowding

2. Bookings were confirmed multiple times over phone so that ensured not extra cars came in for service. The main gate was closed at all times so people would not just walk in.

3. The first thing they did at the gate is checked body temperature with that gun. Anyone with a temperature was not allowed inside.

4. Asked me to do a self assessment on arogya setu app and show the result to the security before letting in

5. Once inside, immediately asked me and my dad to disembark. The usual touchpoints like door handle, steering and gear knob was sanitized by a person and plastic covers put on steering, gear knob, seat. (charged 200 Rs in service bill)

6. Of course, hand sanitizers were dispensed like 'prasad' , so everbody was using it after every few minutes, dad and I included.

7. All spaces have been marked, car parking slots, markers for where people should stand while inspection, inside office, markers for chairs and tables and queue for cashier.

8. Excess tables and chairs removed so people dont have to crowd the office.

9. Key is kept in a plastic bag immediately when handing over the car. So no question of someone touching it. The ones without sensors, and required to be inserted are kept inserted with a plastic cover on the exposed part. No cars are parked outside premises.

All in all, the measures were commendable and staff were following them. Only thing I wished was they did the pre-delivery sanitation in front of me so that I could see the covers getting removed after everything was done."

[hothatchaway]

The lockdown was inevitable, it has happened in every nation, barring Sweden. The fact that in a nation of 1.3 billion mostly unruly citizens, the numbers violating the measures would by themselves be more than the population of many nations is not something one can blame the government for. It was a strict stay at home measure often implemented by lathi wielding cops, just goes to show how little we have come in all these years.

However, I am yet to understand what was achieved by a dramatic announcement shutting everything down in a tiny window of four hours. What were people expected to accomplish in those few hours? Rush home, hoard essentials, visit ones fiancee, all of the above and some more?

I remember having stepped out the evening of March 22. I live in Kolkata so I already knew that some form of tight restrictions were coming as about 60 odd districts which had reported cases were to come under the scanner. I was mentally and materially prepared. Still the announcement felt surreal. I wonder how the average junta would have reacted to it. Not everyone had the luxury of witnessing the televised address with more than some inkling of what was to follow. I suspect many, and I mean many, would have received the information via others and left to interpret what the lockdown was for and what was in store for them

We now know that a bevy of officials from diverse backgrounds would have advised the prime minister. If there were committee meetings I would give an arm and a leg to read their minutes. I would love to be a fly on the wall when the calls trickled down to the DMs who are the instruments of implementation of any executive order. After all, why blame the PM and the government alone when they are essentially politicians who operate on the advise of bureaucrats, who do the actual work. Of course it's another matter if their counsel were ignored.

The sheer number of passengers in shramik trains and in the initial flights reveal how many people were stuck far away from their families. Since enough has been said about the migrant worker tragedy, I will not dwell on it further, but if senior bureaucrats did not see this crisis coming, I would like to see them resign. If the nation was a private Enterprise, heads would have rolled by now.

I do feel that we got the timing wrong. The nation and it's economy is spent after two months of starvation, and the drip of a gradual reopening will not suffice. Hence we are seeing a barrage of resumptions, even of sectors which I thought are in no position to reopen at a time when the case count is galloping. We have all done the lives vs livelihood debate enough so we know there is no alternative now. I feel that as citizens, we have been kept guessing at every step of the crisis about what is to come next. Of course I know that it's an extraordinary situation with no precedence. The talking heads from various ministries would have done well to be more humble in that case. Heard Amitabh Kant from Niti aayog speak on TV the other night. He appeared sanguine and could justify every decision. Did not seem overawed at all. Wish I had his confidence.

I feel we could have taken some more time to assess all variables before locking down. It may have been an extra four days to upto a week. Would we have been any worse off? I really don't think so. It may have allowed us to ease some of the pressure which built up with the abrupt imposition and remained pent up. After all, there wasn't anything dramatic we could have done in these two months to prepare for the surge of cases. You can get more beds, but where will you get the extra doctors and nurses to man them? There isn't any breakthrough in the medical front yet apart from a few palliatives. The HCQ success story seems dead and buried.

I am getting a strange sense of disconnect as we rapidly "unlock", not far behind the pace at which we "locked down". The official narrative is optimistic bordering on the celebratory. Hope reality pans out as such in the weeks to come.

[Aditya_Bhp]

Originally Posted by smooth indian

The Namaste Trump event took place on Feb 23. The first case in India was detected on Jan 30 in Kerala. The WHO declared COVID a global epidemic on March 11. On March 11 India had less than 200 confirmed cases.

On March 11, India had just a single testing center- NIV PUNE. So no tests=no cases.

Also, the testing strategy was flawed. In the form a doctor fills, the 1st question was "Has the patient been to Wuhan?" and 2nd question was "Have you been to a fish market in a country outside?" Only if the answer to these two questions were yes, they will look at "Does the patient have cold, fever, cough?", and only if the answer is yes, they will accept the sample. Those days, people returning from UAE, Qatar, Singapore, all were not tested. The problem? Most flights into India are from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Doha, etc. There were no cases in these countries back then, but then these are global transit hubs. An Indian would have been sitting in between a Chinese and a South Korean on the flight. The govt recommendations did not allow the testing of these people. So even if they had Covid19 symptoms, doctors couldn't test them.

Originally Posted by smooth indian

By March 23 when the lockdown was announced the confirmed cases spiked up to more than 1000. It was during this period from March 11 to 23, that the govt really had to pay attention, consult experts and formulate a strategy. I am not sure the trump event is a factor here.

The govt had time from Jan 30th, not March 11th. Many countries and even states in India acted early and were able to control the outbreak. I have said it before, there was global shortage of PPE kits, masks and testing kits, India could have thought about exporting it, but it didn't.

Originally Posted by smooth indian

Lockdowns were proposed by WHO and enforced by govts around the world based on Dr Niel Ferguson's study and recommendations; There is now a legitimate dark cloud of doubt over the effectiveness of these recommendations.
There isn't really a clear case of the Modi govt being negligent.

Lockdowns may have been proposed by WHO, but they also said this and I quote, "We have a simple message to all countries - test, test, test," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva.
"All countries should be able to test all suspected cases, they cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded," he added." This was on March 16th, 10 days before the lockdown. But then, did India listen to this? A lockdown without testing, contact tracing and quarantining was pointless as per WHO. And it took 3 months for India to increase tests to 1 Lakh/day! There's no shortage of trained man power here, there are more than enough labs ready, all it needs is investment. Also, there is no shortage of kits now, and it can testing can be increased to 3Lakhs/day if money is invested.

Originally Posted by smooth indian

You might say clueless but baring Taiwan, Japan and South Korea (possibly North Korea as well), all other national govts were either in denial, were sleeping at the wheel or had no idea about what to make of the situation. The one aberration was Sweden which decided against lockdowns (perhaps for developing herd immunity) with only social distancing measures to follow. Does anyone think this would have gone smoothly in India?

Not just these three, look at Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, there are many countries that acted early and succeeded. Indian govt knows that the Indian public health care is pathetic and that India wouldn't be able to manage the situation, yet nothing much was done. It was already a overburdened system and on the verge of collapse.

Originally Posted by smooth indian

Even now with more restricted movement there is a resurgence of cases in Kerala (where the situation was well in control with loud proclamations) because of a small but fresh lot of people arriving form Maharashtra and other states.
All in All I think this was an unprecedented situation where any formation in the govt (take your pick) would have found challenging.

The situation in Kerala was and is still under control in most parts of the state. Among the cases reported in the last 15 days, 95% of them were people who came from outside the state. And its not a small lot that has entered the state, its 1.4Lakh people till now and more are coming. The loud proclamation was felt because of the surprise. Kerala is a state with the 3rd/4th busiest international airport in India and 3 other International airports, with a huge expat population entering the state, and high population density, and large groups of poor migrant population who haven't been to school, it was a recipe for disaster. It was leading the charts in the initial periods of lockdown, but on May 14th, the number of active cases fell to just 14. It would have even gone to zero had there been no one entering the state. The lockdown was very successful in Kerala and the people cooperated with the government and stayed at home. So this surprised the world, as more advanced economies were struggling but a tiny bankrupt state in a corner of India was able to do better.

[ABHI_1512]

Originally Posted by thecarguy

The lockdown by the govt. on a 4 hour notice was a good idea.
While the lockdown could have been implemented sooner and the flights from affected countries banned sooner, hindsight is always 20/20. To assume that a thread by people, most of whom are neither epidemiologists or doctors discussing the decision and coming up with better solutions is laughable and arrogant.

You can laugh all you want my friend, but you will be surprised to know that the authorities also decided on the lockdown without any consultations with the Epidemiologists and Doctors that you are talking about !! I am sure you didn’t know that .. to know how the authorities took the pandemic seriously, please take some pain to go through the link.


https://nidm.gov.in/covid19/PDF/covid19/research/41.pdf

Please read the joint statement made on May 25th by the Task force consisting of Indian Public Health Association(IPHA), Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine( IAPSM) and Indian Association of Epidemiologists(IAE) which was incidentally constituted in April 2020 by the central government, almost two weeks after the lockdown !! I am sure you will go through the link and come back again to laugh at us non- specialists writing on a thread and no, I did not find your post offensive at all but bereft of facts, that’s all.

Regards.

Originally Posted by Sebring

If I can answer from my personal experience, the lockdown put the fear of death in me. And hammered it in pretty hard. I really started to feel that if I'm careless I will lose my life.

By whatever you wrote, it points towards PANIC. May be you panicked because of the suddenness of the lockdown, now imagine the plight of the migrant workers. Yes, you had the liberty to at least wash your hands innumerable times, using hand sanitisers and not touching your face, but not many got that chance even. For them, the lockdown snatched away their lives in front within a space of four hours. The lockdown was needed may be but the timing was horrendously wrong.

For the past few months, I have had to visit hospitals as well as high risk areas, have lost a close one for the want of dialysis since due to the initial direction towards COVID, the hospitals stopped the usual patients. I took the usual protections and precautions and was prepared for any eventuality knowing fully well about the pandemic. See, that’s the point I was always making, you see people already out on the streets throwing caution to the winds and it’s all because everybody has a stomach to fill first to survive the virus. After two months of lockdown, people are down to the knees.

Regarding your contention that spitting has stopped and all that, if someone in the power had already thought of keeping the streets clean, they would have already succeeded if they had made spitting punishable by law. Now, people object to spitting may be or are aware of consequences more. But those achievements pale in comparison to the consequences of the lockdown and that’s a pity!

The Maruti numbers are almost 86% down YOY but then these are tough times and will take some time to recover for sure.

[smooth indian]

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

On March 11, India had just a single testing center- NIV PUNE. So no tests=no cases.

Also, the testing strategy was flawed. In the form a doctor fills, the 1st question was "Has the patient been to Wuhan?" and 2nd question was "Have you been to a fish market in a country outside?" Only if the answer to these two questions were yes, they will look at "Does the patient have cold, fever, cough?", and only if the answer is yes, they will accept the sample. Those days, people returning from UAE, Qatar, Singapore, all were not tested. The problem? Most flights into India are from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Doha, etc. There were no cases in these countries back then, but then these are global transit hubs. An Indian would have been sitting in between a Chinese and a South Korean on the flight. The govt recommendations did not allow the testing of these people. So even if they had Covid19 symptoms, doctors couldn't test them.


The govt had time from Jan 30th, not March 11th. Many countries and even states in India acted early and were able to control the outbreak. I have said it before, there was global shortage of PPE kits, masks and testing kits, India could have thought about exporting it, but it didn't.

If we all dial back our memories early March then, the COVID crisis was distant with it epicenter in Wuhan. Not unlike the ebola crisis which was also serious but mostly restricted to Western Africa. I feel the Indian govt was aware but didn't want to sound the alarm and create panic. However, the govt did act earlier than several other nations in going for a lockdown and perhaps because of that decisive action the death toll per 100000 people is much lower in India.

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

Lockdowns may have been proposed by WHO, but they also said this and I quote, "We have a simple message to all countries - test, test, test," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva.
"All countries should be able to test all suspected cases, they cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded," he added." This was on March 16th, 10 days before the lockdown. But then, did India listen to this? A lockdown without testing, contact tracing and quarantining was pointless as per WHO. And it took 3 months for India to increase tests to 1 Lakh/day! There's no shortage of trained man power here, there are more than enough labs ready, all it needs is investment. Also, there is no shortage of kits now, and it can testing can be increased to 3Lakhs/day if money is invested.

Funding/Investment is always an issue considering that the govt's tax revenues have taken an hit

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

Not just these three, look at Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, there are many countries that acted early and succeeded. Indian govt knows that the Indian public health care is pathetic and that India wouldn't be able to manage the situation, yet nothing much was done. It was already a overburdened system and on the verge of collapse.

Of course the govt of India wasn't going to overhaul the whole healthcare system in the span of 3 months. Aus, NZ and perhaps Vietnam have higher per capita tax revenues with stable populations and stronger currencies/purchasing power. This allows them to devote more resources per capita for healthcare. India doesn't have that much fiscal space on account of our burgeoning population, high income inequality and narrow tax base.

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

The situation in Kerala was and is still under control in most parts of the state. Among the cases reported in the last 15 days, 95% of them were people who came from outside the state. And its not a small lot that has entered the state, its 1.4Lakh people till now and more are coming. The loud proclamation was felt because of the surprise. Kerala is a state with the 3rd/4th busiest international airport in India and 3 other International airports, with a huge expat population entering the state, and high population density, and large groups of poor migrant population who haven't been to school, it was a recipe for disaster. It was leading the charts in the initial periods of lockdown, but on May 14th, the number of active cases fell to just 14. It would have even gone to zero had there been no one entering the state. The lockdown was very successful in Kerala and the people cooperated with the government and stayed at home. So this surprised the world, as more advanced economies were struggling but a tiny bankrupt state in a corner of India was able to do better.

The worst hit state by a significant margin is Maharashtra, particularly Mumbai which is easily the densest city in India. So even though kerala has a higher population density, it doesn't have ultra dense pockets such as dharavi. It is precisely in these pockets where COVID-19 hit hard. When you move away from these big dense areas the casualty numbers seem to be under control. The situation is less serious once you have moved away from Mumbai and Pune. One might also note that apart from very high migrant population, Maharashtra is located in the middle of the country with a lot of national transport flows as well as international air traffic routed through Maharashtra's larger cities; The complications arising from events such as the 'Tablighi Jamat' also hit the state harder. Kerala being at the southern end was spared some of these flows after the initial rush.
The USA and european countries neglected the seriousness of the problem and delayed any measures until it was too late. The one inexplicable case is Gujarat which not as densely populated and didn't seem to have a significant death rate in the initial stages but has still managed to become number 2 in India on account of confirmed cases and COVID deaths.

[DigitalOne]

My in-laws are coming to Bangalore from abroad (by Vande Bharat/Air India). Few questions:

1. For international travellers, some sites are saying it is 14 days institutional quarantine (IQ) whereas others say 7 days ( + 7 days HQ). Not able to figure out what are the current rules.

2. How is the travel from the Blr airport to the IQ centres taken care? Do we have to arrange this?

3. Are visitors allowed (with social distancing) to the IQ during quarantine period? More specifically can we provide home-cooked meals to my in-laws?

Any other tips are welcome.

[DrPriyankT]

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

Preventive and Social Medicine is a branch of medicine that has huge potential but is neglected by the government. Epidemics and Pandemics are best handled by PSM doctors, because they specialise in it. But PSM doctors are poorly paid and ignored most of the time.

Recently Karnataka govt realized the importance of Public Health experts and they offered jobs on emergency basis, but then the pay was less, just ₹40000pm. That’s lesser than what a doctor without PG is offered in a medical college. No one would join and posts remain vacant.

Even on TV, media interviews are mostly around people like Dr.Devi Shetty, who is a Cardiothoracic surgeon, one who has no role in treating Covid19 patients, its ‘out of syllabus’ for him.
The leading doctor in NITI Aayog, Dr Paul, he is a Pediatrician, he can manage Covid19 patients but then he cannot plan public health, at the max he can look into nutritional requirements of the children.

Public Health needs qualified experts, who understand the Community as whole, are experienced in handling epidemics and the statistics around it and can plan and take necessary steps. And most PSM doctors in India after being neglected by GOI, are picked up by WHO and other global agencies. Atleast now, the govt should realise their potential and listen to them.

Sir, I am from the medical profession(an ENT Surgeon). PSM as a subject for me was very dry, and it did not offer the action and excitement, which comes with being either a physician or a surgeon. Also the current curriculum is very strange IMHO, for example, we were actually taught how a toilet is constructed and how a sewage disposal plant works. We were also taught the basics of epidemiology, but all the part of the curriculum like I mentioned made me (and all my batchmates) loose interest in the subject. Also the main text of PSM, Park's Preventive and Social Medicine, is a book on which I have slept multiple times! :-P. It was not as involving as the texts in clinical subjects. I personally have dropped a year for PG admission, so that I could have gotten a surgical branch, and I could have gotten a MD(PSM) seat in my first attempt in my rank. In my batch of 100, in MBBS, only 1 batchmate took up PSM.

The issue is none of the toppers ever want to take up PSM. There is always a rat race for clinical branches. From my observation, its very rare to see someone take PSM out of choice, most take it out of compulsion and the need to do PG. Post passing out, unlike clinical branches, majority of the PSM post grads enter the medical colleges, and sadly don't earn as much as their clinical colleagues would. Only a tiny majority get well paying jobs with foreign organizations. Sadly this leads to stagnation and it hinders the growth of the branch in India.

The only solution to make this branch worthwhile and attractive is increased payscale and increased opportunity for employment of these very important PSM postgrads in government departments dealing with health and welfare and not just in medical colleges.

P.S: I honestly accept that I have not studied with as much passion as I studied clinical subjects, and I studied it just for the sake of it as it was a part of our curriculum. Hopefully in the new MBBS curriculum, being planned, the teaching methodologies for the subject change, and the subject becomes interesting. Hopefully with this epidemic, PSM as a subject should get its due and people get its relevance.

[GutsyGibbon]

Originally Posted by mohansrides

Number is infections mean nothing. For Covid and it’s death rate, we simply cannot afford the human toll of a lockdown as a countermeasure any longer. That much has become amply clear.

I hear about people struggling to get medical attention to things like Malaria, typhoid, and jaundice. It is not like the mosquitoes are going to take a break. If people are going to die because of these diseases with cure, because the hospitals are so focussed on Covid 19 - it makes the whole lockdown a moot point. I think the economic toll, has been very obvious. The countrywide infections/deaths should mean nothing now, in terms of policy making.

[thecarguy]

Originally Posted by ABHI_1512

You can laugh all you want my friend, but you will be surprised to know that the authorities also decided on the lockdown without any consultations with the Epidemiologists and Doctors that you are talking about !! I am sure you didn’t know that .. to know how the authorities took the pandemic seriously, please take some pain to go through the link.


https://nidm.gov.in/covid19/PDF/covid19/research/41.pdf

Please read the joint statement made on May 25th by the Task force consisting of Indian Public Health Association(IPHA), Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine( IAPSM) and Indian Association of Epidemiologists(IAE) which was incidentally constituted in April 2020 by the central government, almost two weeks after the lockdown !! I am sure you will go through the link and come back again to laugh at us non- specialists writing on a thread and no, I did not find your post offensive at all but bereft of facts, that’s all.

Regards.

Okay, I stand corrected, maybe it was wise to send the migrants back to their respected states before implementing a lockdown.

The question is, why wasn't this issue/statement raised in the first joint statement by the Taskforce consisting of the Indian Public Health Association(IPHA), which at some points lauded the efforts of the government and pointed to the involvement of epidemiologists in the decision-making process.

Before the declaration of the pandemic by WHO, Government of India’s policy of immigration control
from the most infected country prevented the seeding of the CVD 19 infections in India. Concurrent
implementation of Screening, Isolation, Quarantining of infected and suspect cases as well as other
surveillance and containment measures introduced by the Ministry of Health & FW Government of India
was another important step which impacted the rate of spread in the different states. Unlike other
countries, In India, strict surveillance measures specially contact tracing using android technology and use
of “Enforced Social Distancing” in the form of partial and or total lock down of some districts, whole
state and lastly the whole country has resulted in curtailing the speed of the pandemic.

This press release is just the taskforce's attempts to shift the blame and absolve themselves off any responsibility. I was aware of the April 2020 press release but not this one.It's a 360-degree change in stance by the committee. Read them side by side and you will understand what this press release is meant to do.

https://www.iphaonline.org/wp-conten...pm_Final-1.pdf

So, while this Taskforce "believed" in April that the government implementation was backed by epidemiologists and it was good decision making by the govt. it has washed its hands off due to the humanitarian crises. As I said, hindsight is 20/20.

Regards