Covid-19 took the lives of nearly 1.9 million people in 2020, with the biggest toll reported by the US and Brazil. The year saw over 84 million people infected, while the exact number recorded in China, the epicenter was not known to the world. India stood third place n terms of infection and mortality while having only half the number recorded by the US India’s mortality rate was also the lowest, which astonished the world.
The year 2021 began with not so good news for California and London as the death toll and fear of infection in these places terrified the world. But for the rest of the world, the year 2021 began with a hope of ebbing the pandemic load and bracing a hope of vaccine supplies.
Most people in India considered Covid-19 only as flu. Doctors called it the dirty flu with erratic behavior It infected selectively, some people with no comorbidity more severely negating virologists’ conclusion that the virus was more lethal for people with comorbid health issues. But the infection was more serious in many healthy young people. Only clinical scientists knew what went wrong in administering some non-targeted drugs. Somewhere, something went terribly wrong, that could only be buried in history.
Miscalculations of the medical fraternity and lawmakers finally made the calculation of pharma giants right. Vaccines rolled out at record speed without spending sufficient time to ascertain the extent of their risks and safeties. But how badly peoplés livelihood was hit by the exaggerated fear of the pandemic couldn’t be estimated. When the dirty flu became a pandemic or made to be a pandemic, the year 2020 carried the contortion of a ghost
The pandemic was made to feel serious because of the massive lockdown that made people feel doomed. For months, streets were closed with police barricades. All shops, other than essential service stores. closed to give the streets a look of ghosts. Factories closed and asked workers to cool their heels at home with no payments for months Some small units never opened thereafter. Some workers never returned to their work sites Some workers who were displaced after the lockdown remain unplaced. Religious places were closed and Gods locked down for months. Priests and God’s servicemen in millions of shrines starved along with people working around the shrines. What is more, hospitals and dispensaries were closed. Pharmacists. who were disallowed to sell common painkillers and bulk drugs, which used to be sold as OTC products, sat for no business staring at the passersby? None of them returned to normalcy.
It is inane to expect the world to return to the old order. The government exchequer may swell. The economy may return to normalcy and even boom if some businesses are placed to take advantage of the new world order. But the displaced ones should be rehabilitated from the troubles they were pushed in. That could be the more sagacious inclusive growth.
