The coronavirus pandemic could not unite the world. If at all, it exposed the deep divisions existing within humanity, from the individual to the general; and expression of anger towards doctors, religions, and countries. Humans do not want to lose anytime, it seems, individually or collectively. So, even with lives saved in turbulent times by doctors working in challenging situations of unclear protocols, inadequate equipment, variable disease presentations, and difficult treatments, people thought fit to abuse and hit doctors in the event of failure or perceived harassment. Many doctors lost their lives to the virus; and the sad story of a dead doctor denied a proper burial during the first wave was truly disturbing.
At the peak of lockdown, many hospitals in the private sector almost shut down. Social media platforms and news channels attacked the private sector with a twisted narrative that people are healthier because there are no hospitals to make them sick! This, because beds were empty in the corporate hospitals, doctors were sitting at home, deaths had decreased, and labs were closing. Doctors and hospitals were creating diseases and a diseased society as the lockdown proved. This is a fundamental error in statistics to confuse correlation with causation in presence of a lockdown as a major confounding factor. Here, everyone was sitting at home. People were washing hands at the slightest hint of suspicion, avoiding all human contact, avoiding all forms of vehicular travel, stopped breathing the polluted air, and stopped eating and drinking outside their homes. This is a major shift in lifestyle which would eliminate accidents, respiratory illnesses, asthmas, diarrhoeal illnesses, and varied infections; these happen to be the major cause of medical visits and hospitalizations. Postponing elective surgeries for a month or so is always acceptable, but too much postponing may lead to later surge in problems. Similarly, chronic disease patients can always choose to stay at home without regular check-ups for a month or two. The media did not choose to discuss how problems would manifest and affect the health systems in the post-pandemic situation.
In fields of human activity, professionals sometimes may be suspect, but any profession is pure. Irresponsible generalizations based on individual instances causes more disharmony in an already fragmented doctor-patient relationship. In a society with an allopathic doctor to population ratio of 1 in 1445 (still less than the WHO prescribed 1 per 1000), and where the private sector provides almost 80 percent of outpatient and 60 percent of inpatient care, there is a need to address how best to integrate both these sectors. The administrative and government machinery along with public intellectuals in the academia and the media should be taking pro-active steps to provide the best possible health care to all the citizens in every part of the country. Abusing the private sector is hardly the way forward. Using a correlation between closed hospitals and reduced admissions to conclude that doctors and corporates are creating diseases is improper understanding at best or intellectual dishonesty at worst. The private sector is solidly in support of the warriors in the frontlines; all of them cannot perhaps join the fight for various reasons. It is good that the government has brought an ordinance to stop abuse of health workers, but such an ordinance reflects a deeper malaise in the country which needs addressing urgently.
China is another enemy today. USA especially is taking a high moral stand claiming the possibility of an engineered virus in the lab requiring investigation. Post-pandemic, in all probability, China will again be in charge with all countries lining up for favours. And it might even happen that any mischief in China have roots in the US. If so, the present emotional outbursts will all sink into silence. However, the fact remains, is not America, Russia, and Europe not guilty of similar upsetting of world order many times over? Defence warfare research in the advanced countries is overwhelming. The world order and balance hang as on an upright needle. Cyber, chemical, nuclear, and biological research is a massive venture in a quest to make one’s borders or lands safe, but continuing to make the world an unsafe place. A hundred years back it was Europe, US, and Japan which got us into world wars and the usage of the atom bomb on an urgent basis. Further back were the brutal European colonisations of Asia, Africa, Australia, and Americas based on a few decades of advanced technology in guns and naval power. The potential to destruction has increased many times over today in a blind quest for power. If the allegations of an engineered virus are true, China have just beat them all to become the first in the contemporary world. Can we ever have a safer world? There seems to be no hope of a borderless world and a single humanity in the decades or perhaps even centuries to come. Self-destruction may come much before a favourable mutation in our genetic make-up; a mutation which allows humans to seek harmony not only with other humans but the rest of nature too, both animate and inanimate.
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