Healthcare & Covid

Borders around the country remain closed, no matter what the compulsion of those trying to cross them

Any territory around the world, right from a street to a State to a city or a region, has its characteristics. The word “territory” has one of its most common usages in the field of sports and athletics where identities compete from a defined piece of land without having a sovereign status. Thus, it is that Scotland, as a territory, can field a team without having a sovereign status. However, this cannot be the place to resolve these concerns or indeed debate them. The use of the word “territory” in the first sentence of this column is in terms of identity. COVID-19 has changed many things in our world. How many of them will remain altered and how many will relapse to their original form once the virus leaves us is anybody’s guess. However, if one can survive the stress of the possibility of being a Coronavirus suspect and being put in quarantine, then there are some very interesting processes at play.

A former civil servant, who for some reason had to travel by car from Almora to Delhi, thus traversing through the three States […]

For those who will survive the Covid-19 era, it will be another chance to look at the fundamentals of a civilised life

One of the biggest industries currently is forecasting the future of a post-Coronavirus world. Various themes are being touted — “Revival to survival”, “Covid-19: A learning opportunity for higher education”, “Coping with uncertainty” and many more. The online world has seldom been so vibrant. Everyone has something to say. Right from psychiatrists, public opinion leaders, journalists, statisticians, industrial lobbyists and of course public speakers. The world is teeming with futurologists, forecasters and many more breeds yet to be named. The danger of anyone being proved wrong is very little because the future is not here yet.

However, one thing is certain, the passing away of the Coronavirus is not in doubt. One doesn’t have to be blessed with psychic powers to realise that like everything else “this too shall pass.”

The question therefore is not, if this shall pass, the question is when? And at what cost? It is the uncertainty of it all that is gripping, worrying and more. Since a large number of the vectors are asymptomatic and possible solutions are still in the works, one doesn’t know where it […]

The social narrative itself will need to change. Perceptions will have to alter. The frameworks of reference will have to shift

When information has reasonable chances of being accurate and comes from a knowledgeable source and that authority cannot be identified, it is customary to say that the information being provided is from a “reliable source.” Hence, as per usually reliable sources, so far as Covid-19 is concerned, the coming week-10 days are crucial to come to a reasonable conclusion on the trends of the pandemic.

Be that as it may, it is obvious that when the Coronavirus passes into the corridors of time, the kind of world which would then have emerged would not be exactly the same as the one which experienced the onslaught of the pandemic.

To put it simply, as has been pointed out by some thinkers, many in the world today are really in the mode of grieving the death of the normal; of life as we know it. Life no longer begins with the morning routine of rush or leisure, depending upon whether one is exercising or not. Breakfast doesn’t follow necessarily at the same hour and one is not rushing out of doors to take some transport/or […]

The present experience forms a part of the collage of this planet’s history. How we respond will determine how the future shall emerge

Clearly the planet is passing through challenging times. However, this is not the first time in the history of mankind that, what is now being termed as a “pandemic”, has struck. From plagues, to floods to various viral threats, the Earth has periodically witnessed humongous disasters. It is all chronicled for anyone with a curious mind who wants to update his/her knowledge about the Blue Planet. This is also not the first time, nor will it be the last, when a disease has struck to which there is no known, tested and established antidote available. However, such experiences in the digital era acquire a completely unique aura and dimension. News travels at a speed which has not even been mapped.

A comparative perspective emerges as never before in history. When the nationwide lockdown was announced, one of the questions that was uppermost on everyone’s minds was: Has a complete shutdown ever been attempted at such a scale, to include all 1.3 billion people, all together? Add to it the unique dimension of the period over which it will be […]