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Lockdown, boredom, anxiety, uncertainty - I think it all is showing through in some of our posts on CV. As we go through this period, each of us at best partly informed, let this be a thread to share and learn rather than express ourselves sharply towards fellow members none of whom are, I'm sure you agree, responsible for the CV pandemic.
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Originally Posted by DeKay So, what, do we simply stop giving a damn about the invisible killer, go about our daily lives and turn a blind eye to the pile of dead bodies that'll grow larger and larger by the hour? I don't think you yourself believe the absurdity of your own statement - Without lock-down the economy with be back to its sorry old state, but at least millions will have jobs and their survival assured
Really? What happens when all us get infected, get sick and can't show up to work anymore? Buddy, this isn't about me and my loved ones, this is about you just as much as it is about me. The virus doesn't care if you're a poor daily wage worker or the Prime Minister of Britain. |
I don't think the writer of the post you refer to wishes to kill the innocent poor with indifference. I work in health care for the economically deprived. Allow me to explain. Flattening the Curve assumes the nation has a basic foundation of medical infrastructure that can cope with the influx if it was flattened and spread over a period of time. Flattening the Curve concept will work in a developed nation as the medical infrastructure exists only that it cannot cope with the extra ordinary peaks. In India, as in other poor countries, the lack of basic medical infrastructure (quantity and quality) outside the top 30 cities means that no matter how well meant our efforts are the concept does not apply to us. We have 0.65 doctors per 1000 vs USA's 2.3 and Italy's 4.3. I hope this helps.
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Originally Posted by TRR I'm not a blind supporter for the government, but the way they're being portrayed here is as if it was being run by a group of headless chickens. More than the set of ministers, I think our bureaucrats did a fairly decent of job of trying to contain the virus spread. The biggest mistake they did? Trusting Indian citizens to stay at home. |
Dear @TRR, First thank you for meticulously listing out the actions GoI took with links. I am sure it will help many to get better acquainted with the action taken and the sequence. The GoI to its credit did get off to a early start. The trick they missed, and this I speak with the crutches of 20/20 hindsight, is to have not started mass testing in February itself or failing that by 1st March. But as I said with a rapidly evolving never before situation I won't be too hard on them - after all most European countries, other than Germany, also missed the boat.
What concerns me about attitude were the pronouncements of the Health Minister which could give the impression of not doing his homework well enough. Now that we have the country locked down even this period is not being used to get things onto a war footing. In the 3 hospitals that I am associated with in 3 states only yesterday, literally, yesterday, 4 days after the lockdown have we received instructions to convert 25% of the beds for Covid-19. Could this have been thought of earlier? Could some fundamentals have been prepared for before the overnight lockdown? Converting two wards for isolation is not so hard. But what about the machines, the pulmonary specialists?? - no answers. We have been told to figure out our plans. Being good citizens we will. But speaking from ground zero I would struggle to give their degree of planning, thought and preparation more than 1 mark out of 10.
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Originally Posted by TRR I think they could have done better with the migrant workers. But since I don't have a suggestion for it, I'll refrain from criticizing them for the moment. |
The point marked in bold is an understatement. If a Govt indulges in knee jerk actions that cause millions to uproot themselves and try and walk back a few hundred kms to their village homes it is a sad reflection on the political leadership and their disregard for the poor whom they claim to be working for. This is the single largest home grown self created refugee like problem since partition. It is a tragic reflection of lack of any planning and preparation. Let's not even try and make excuses for this, please.
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Originally Posted by TRR Pray tell, what would have been the adequate notice period required in this instance? You say one week's time to prepare, I say one week's time for the virus to spread to incomprehensible levels and severely overburden our medical system and personnel. |
Yes two weeks of prep time for the administration and a one week announcement notice for the public. That is what was needed. There is no earthly reason why the Govt could not have started its prep work on 11th March 2020. There is no reason for the Govt not to have been able to think this through in end-February /early-March for a mid-March lockdown. By not planning for it they have crash landed slap bang into just the crowding, jamming and migration to villages that was to be avoided. The damage has already been done in the last 10 to 15 days since train closures etc started to be announced with no warning.
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Now tell me honestly where you think India would have ended up, if we were given a week to go out in a jolly fashion.
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This is a public forum. All of us are well read. Some of us are from this field. May I request you not waste your sarcasm.
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Also, this was not a sudden development and a comparison to DeMo
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The comparison with DeMo was to emphasize the trend of making big bang announcements with zero homework. Same happened with GST and now CV.
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in this regard is not warranted simply because nearly all major districts were shutdown or were on the verge of being shutdown much before the lockdown was announced. People refused to stock up then, because of the chalta hai attitude. Nothing would have changed with a one-week notice.
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75 districts were on a partial lockdown out of about 700 districts. There is a hell of a lot more to prepare for a lockdown of 3 weeks than stocking up rations at home. Ask those who run factories, companies, manage employees, have payments in transit, need to fulfill export orders, employees and old relatives in transit, engineers on field visits, shutting down heavy machinery & boilers safely .....I could go on.
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Do a lockdown and be blamed for destroying the informal sector. Don't do a lockdown and be blamed for the thousands that end up dead. It really is a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario for the government. Now I realize why some babus in the government have such thick skins.
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I think my post was clear that I accept the lock down. We left it so late that no other alternative was feasible. The manner of a lockdown with zero preparation by the Govt is what I am talking of in my last post.