What After the 3-Week Lockdown?

Most people would admire India for the quick and determined way it is implementing a three-week lockdown against Covid-19. I personally believe that the coming warm months would be a boon to India in controlling the spread of the virus. However, I do not believe that the number of active cases would be less than 1000 on April 15 when the current 3-week Lockdown is to end, but one cannot imagine extending the lockdown with the same severity. 

What would be the drop in GDP for the current year below what it would have been without Covid-19? How would it compare with the reduction that demonetization of high value currency notes caused? What would be the impact of this reduction on the employment situation?

On the other hand, we cannot go back to business-as-usual on April 15. The virus would very much be there, and we would need control measures. The war on Covid-19 would have to continue. We have a short time in which we have to plan control measures that are medically and economically wise. My suggestion is that we need an easy-to-implement scheme that would permit essential movement to keep the economy ticking, while at the same time making public places less crowded. Non-essential movement of people needs to be effectively controlled. Essential production and movement of goods should be allowed. Essential services should be allowed not just to support survival, but also to support jobs.
Who is going to decide what is essential and on what basis? For instance, should the production of cigarettes and beedis be allowed? What about liquor and lipstick?

I am sure that there are smart people in decision making places, but the world has seen on many occasions the danger of letting a set of insiders make all the decisions without public discussion. So, we have to promote nationwide discussion on an urgent basis. The media have a big responsibility in enabling this. Perhaps every channel should devote an hour everyday for this discussion. Every newspaper should devote a page everyday for this. We cannot probably complete all the discussion required by 5 PM on April 14! We should plan for a gradual loosening of controls starting on April 15, but we do not have all the year to do this. The hot months are going to be the golden months. We should have won the war well before the end of summer. We have to do this without driving millions out of the economy!

Srinivasan Ramani        

Reducing Deaths due to Traffic Accidents

As I write this on 24-March-2020, WHO has reported (Sitrep No 63 dated 23-March-2020) that the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases reported by Indian authorities was 415 and the total number of Covid-19 deaths was 7. In terms of numbers what matters is a third number: confirmed new cases reported in 24 hours prior to report-publication time. It was 132! It is the rate of increase that concerns the authorities. The Covid-19 threat is no doubt very real.

However, let us not forget other threats. India has approximately 150,000 deaths per year from traffic accidents. That is over 400 deaths per DAY! We should aim to reduce traffic deaths to half the current rate in three years. Do we have the political will to do that?

Srinivasan Ramani  

Swine Flu, Bird Flu etc. Is it time for some of us to switch to vegetarian food?

Many Indian cultures treat non-vegetarian food as taboo, but permit the consumption of dairy products. This seems to be a reasonable compromise between vegan diet and non-vegetarian diet. It is widely believed that humanity is slowly evolving to a time when non-vegetarian food would be an exception rather than the rule.

Several epidemics like Swine flu and bird flu are believed to be associated with unhygienic conditions in which pigs and chicken are raised in huge farms. Visit
Article in the Guardian

Pollution, parasitic infestation and bacterial contamination are problems associated with fish and seafood.

Apart from the above concerns is the question of how much water is required to produce meat and poultry. With increasing consumption of these products, can we really sustain current farming practices? Visit 
https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/10-shocking-stats-about-water-and-meat-eating/

Given all this, it seems worth asking: Is it time for some of us to avoid or reduce consumption of non-vegetarian food?

Srinivasan Ramani

Avoiding mouth-to-mouth spread of germs

There are prohibitions in a few cultures, including Indian cultures, that seemed to be related to the notion of ritual impurity. Sharing a cup, vessel or cutlery while eating or drinking beverages is one such prohibited habit. Tasting food using a spoon and putting it back into food being cooked is another. Ordering a dessert and sharing it with everyone around the table dipping their spoons into it is yet another. Many Indians who have spent some time in Europe or in the Americas have “learnt” to overcome these prohibitions. In fact, they find it amusing when they see some of their compatriots show inhibitions to be “westernized”!  

In a world in which virus diseases are threatening to become pandemics, the old cultural practices may be valuable to prevent saliva-borne infections. Comments are invited, particularly from medical doctors and microbiologists. Actual prevention of the spread of infections is one thing, and creating awareness of undesirable practices is another. A clear unwillingness to practice habits that could possibly harm others helps both ways.

In this context, it is worth reading about how mumps spreads and what damage it can do.

Srinivasan Ramani

Say Goodbye to the Welcome-Handshake!

Conscious change in social habits is not very common in the human race, but it is time for one such change now.  These are times of the Covid-19 or the Corona virus epidemic! Visit https://fortune.com/2020/02/13/singapore-air-show-coronavirus-handshake/ The Singapore Airshow 2020 is enforcing a no-contact policy!

I would go further.  The handshake is as out-of-date as wearing a sword to work! However, don’t dismiss handshakes as insignificant. They play a vital role in meetings. Meetings between people are more than substitutes for a bunch of emails! They build working relationships and trust. Handshakes play a very important role in this!

The challenge is how to replace the handshake with something equally effective. Bowing and Namastes are candidates, but the best seem to be words of welcome thought out in advance. “We have been waiting for this day!”, “Our team has been looking forward to this visit”, or something like that! These words do not really indicate that you are softening your negotiating position one bit! These are words with warmth but no commitment. They are what the blockchain people call a zero confirmation transaction.

Are they unethical? No, unless you don’t really mean any of what you say. Meetings start with an expectation of possible positive results.  If you are sincere about that, warm gestures to start off the meeting are fair. They are no more unethical than handshakes! Besides, the substitution of handshakes by well thought-out words of welcome could reduce the chances of your being hauled off to the quarantine ward!  

Srinivasan Ramani

   

Fragility of life in the 21st century

It is strange how we take our life for granted and make plans for weeks and months ahead as if we will continue to roll on during that time just as we are doing today.  I got another lesson why I should not do that, last week. It was a cold starting on Sunday the 9^th Feb. It took its usual course of four days and thoroughly messed up my plans for these four days. What if it had been a flu? Well, it would have been worse. Whatever I read seemed only to say it would have been more severe than a cold, but otherwise more of the same. The one distinguishing mark might have been that flu would have had a fever associated with it. 

Well, what if I had gone to one of those conferences in one of those exotic countries/regions? I could have been accidentally caught up in one of those “plagues” of modern times, an acute respiratory illness, like Covid-19, also known as the corona virus disease. The one difference would have been the quarantine! An exotic land would suddenly turn into a frightening dystopia where one would have to play the 3:97 dice game with death, in isolation. What does that mean? Everyone is cagey with numbers, but the mortality rate among Covid-19 patients seems to be 3%. It seems absurd to hear when sane doctors tell you, “Well! We have confirmed to you that you have it. Unfortunately, if you insist on knowing it, the mortality rate is 3%”. Consolation, it doesn’t sound as bad as the death rate! Unless, you have the pesky patient’s habit of looking it up on the web. You don’t even need to know that a thesaurus lists synonyms of words. You need not know anything more to type “mortality death” into the box on Google!

Well, that is a fact of life. Life is as fragile as that: 97:3, 99:1, or 99.5:0.5 sometimes, week after week. It is always a dice game. sometimes safer, sometimes not. A fellow passenger wearing a mask, on the next seat on the plane. Sometimes it is the engine problem you had read about, on that model of plane! It is sometimes those VIP kids in their crorepati cars! I now know who a human being is! He/she knows a few dozen facts of life like this, but keeps going all the same, week after week!

लगे रहो, इनसान!

Incidentally, every pandemic is a chain reaction. In a nuclear weapon, an exploding atom causes one or more other atoms to explode. The result is a rapid release of an enormous amount of energy as a whole lot of atoms explode in a very short time. For a pandemic to continue spreading, all that is needed is for one case to trigger one or more cases in turn. As population densities increase and airlines carry millions of people around, pandemics are inevitable. New forms of healthcare preparedness are necessary. Major hospitals proudly announce that they are ready with a 30-bed isolation ward! What do they plan to do if a pandemic reaches 300 cases a day in that city? We need a national task force to prepare a plan for coping with all eventualities and to monitor the progress of the disease in India. This task force need not even meet; it can do its job over the Internet and submit its report in a week followed by weekly updates. If the Chinese can build a hospital in ten days, can’t we organize a task force in ten days? Can’t we announce an emergency fund to fight the disease and review its size regularly in consultation with the task force?

Srinivasan Ramani

Self Defence for Indian Women

There is an uproar about crimes against women. One Member of Parliament has gone as far as suggesting the lynching of criminals involved. No court would approve of such a drastic practice, but discussion of the topic and coming up with practical solutions is necessary.

Part of the problem is the Indian concept of women as helpless people who cannot defend themselves. At a time when women are taking on the job of combat pilots, this patronizing view of women is harmful. I would argue that at least one or two percent of women who use two-wheelers or cars for risk-prone commuting should get trained in self-defence, and carry licensed pistols. There are 37,000 rapes per year in India. Assume that about 40 or 50 rape attempts end in the attacker being shot. That would send a very powerful message to all brutes. The woman need not shoot to kill. Good self-defence training can tell them what they should do.

There is a tradition of demanding that the government should take responsibility for implementing every suggestion. I would disagree. All I would ask for is that people who run good gyms be encouraged to set up training units to offer self-defence training as a business, including the safe use of pistols. Rigorous selection and careful regulation of these training units is what the police should do.

Srinivasan Ramani