India’s Challenge-Life or Livelihood?

How are the Indians doing these days?

The answer brings no hope.

Every Indian citizen, in a small or big city is facing crisis. Almost every household is kissed by Covid. The people who are still not touched by covid are in metal shock, extremely worried and some are getting disoriented by thinking their plights if kissed by covid. Every household has children and old age persons. The bread earner has to go out to bring in the livelihood and also the virus! One in the family, if effected by the virus is causing the infection to pass into the non effected people of the house. The hospitals are overwhelmed, the doctors and healthcare workers are exhausted both physically and mentally. The daily reported number of covid patients are crossing 3,50,000 and its a huge number if we accumulate it on the weekly basis (24,50000 persons per week). India’s hospitals do not have the capacity to handle these humongous number of patients! Not only the beds in the hospitals are scare, also the number of ICUs, ventilators, oxygen cylinders and required medicines are also falling short of the demand. Many people are getting treated at home, many are not going for testing fearing expenses and other hassles in the hospitals. The situation at hospital is very gloomy as there is a long queue for testing, for medicines, for beds and for other innumerable number of issues. Hence, getting the real number of effected people is tough and never calculated. Moreover, the asymptomatic people are moving around without knowing that they are the career of the virus and thereby spreading the disease. The problem is manifold.

The Indians were not aware of the vaccine except the few privileged ones and the front-line workers. There was no rush among the citizens to get vaccinated as they were in complete dark about the second wave attack. While the other countries of the world were fighting the second wave, gone for lock-down to get the vaccination done, here, in India there was a misconception doing round the corner that the God gifted immunity of Indians has conquered over the covid virus. What an irony!

Now that the virus has caused havoc, people are now know about vaccine, they now know what the unseen enemy can do to them, but the realization has come with a price. The price of losing the near and dear ones, the price of enormous struggle to survive, the struggle to survive every possible trauma during the hospitalization. The sleepless nights and the scuffles of the day might have taught the many Indians the lifetime lessons.

The concern experts are there to decide whether the community transfer is complete or not ?

May be a total lock-down is need of the hour to check the spread of the disease caused by Covid 19 virus. There is no way out as there are scarcity of the treatment facilities. Though , innumerable number of people will be out of job and lose their livelihood, but a lock-down is a must to save the lives first. Let half of the population gets the vaccine, let the hospitals get a respite with less patient inputs, let there are sufficient medicines available, oxygen cylinders are available and more number of make shift hospitals are arranged. Till then, let’s have a total shutdown for the sake of survival.

Anyways, Life is First, and then the livelihood. With lives survived, India will be able to shine again.