India to pay high price for botched up lockdown

Apart from a virus pandemic, India now battles a self inflicted refugee crisis on a scale seen never before!

India’s Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan observed “Lockdown is an extreme intervention to break the chain of Covid transmission. It has great repercussions for the economy, society and psychology”

Lockdown accordingly was to be used strategically only when significant community transmission has started in a country. A tool of last resort.

India on the other hand used it as a tool of first resort when a country wide lockdown was abruptly clamped down on the night of March 24th with only 9 deaths and 550 cases at that time.

Dr K R Anthony, a public health consultant writing in the DeccanHerald observed: “Without any evidence of such community spread, arresting people in their homes made no sense especially in 433 out of the 733 districts in the country.”

So why did India opt to treat lockdown as a tool of first resort??? The clue was provided by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation at the commencement of Lockdown 1.0- “Mahabharata war was won in 18 days. The war that the whole country is now fighting against Corona will take 21 days. Our aim is to win this war in 21 days.”

The Modi government apparently naively believed that by using lockdown as a first resort tool, they could defeat the virus in 21 days flat! The initial 21 days was subsequently extended three times but at the end of 54th day, the virus toll still stood as follows: Cases: 112, 028 Death: 3,434

India remains the only country in the world where lockdown was deployed wherein cases and deaths skyrocketed and not declined.

“The expected main outcome of the lockdown was the flattening of the bell shaped curve of incidence, theoretically three weeks after the lockdown. Instead we are seeing new peaks of infection every day. There is no flattening of the curve, neither on a numerical or on a log frame.”

India’s Lockdown would go down in future Public Health and Disaster Management textbooks as what typically ought not to be done during a pandemic.

By abruptly closing down the whole economy of the country, instead of flattening the curve, India only managed to flatten the economy, putting us back decades.

“Even China did not undertake a full national lockdown. Initially only Wuhan city and later on Jan 23 Hubei province of 50 million were put on lockdown.”

With only 175 out of 740 Districts having confirmed cases at the commencement of the lockdown, the Modi Govt has to date not provided a justification why a countrywide lockdown was deemed necessary and why micro containment as being applied during Lockdown 4.0 was not considered a more appropriate strategy.

The result – India became the only nation in the world to bring her economy to a complete halt. Having done so, it now becomes extremely difficult to kick start the economy.

“With such a Hitlerian Blitzkrieg strategy of fighting an imported virus brought in by the privileged travelling classes, the cruellest collateral damage was inflicted on the millions of migrant labourers and slum dwellers in our cities. They did not know or heard of such a virus in their vicinity and were not prepared to face the lockdown.”

It was crucial to have arranged the fastest transport by special trains or interstate buses for the migrant workers to reach home towns before imposing a long lockdown.

Singapore gave a 5 day notice to its citizens to get ready for a lockdown. South Africa 4 days. Bangladesh 7 days. In fact, all countries in the world imposing lockdowns gave their citizens advance warning. In contrast India gave just 4 hours warning and that too after shopping hours were closed!

Dr Antony was scathing in his comments

“To confine 1.3 billion people to their homes (for those who have homes) and stopping all economic activities was a needless drastic step – without evidence where the virus was and where it isn’t in this vast country, it was a wild shot in the bush even before the game had reached the bush.”

India also emerged the only country in the world where lockdown had been imposed wherein migrant labour revolted en mass to return to their homes by walking.

40 million migrants walking makes it the largest migration in human history and this tragedy even dwarfs what was seen during partition. Apart from a virus pandemic, India now battles a self inflicted refugee crisis on a scale seen never before!

Besides it is not possible to open up industries without migrants coming back to the labour force.

Meanwhile, in one village in UP’s green zone, 50 migrant returnees were tested positive yesterday. The very worst of worst case scenarios is unfolding as we read..

As such incidences spread to every nook and corner of the country due to reverse migration, no containment strategy would henceforth work any more in the absence of either an anti viral drug or a vaccine. Only herd immunity a la Sweden remains an option by default.

We can now make the following predictions with a high degree of confidence:

a) By mid June, India would catapult itself as the country with the 2nd highest Covid cases in the world

b) By beginning of August, we would relegate the US to distant second place or come very close

c) By July-August our hospitals particularly in major cities would be mostly overwhelmed just as those in Mumbai & Ahmedabad are presently almost are, and the national death toll should at least cross a couple of lakhs.

“Most of the educated ones of my closest friends and relatives have now realised the destructive and foolish agenda of Mr Jhutappa ! Top bureaucrats, intellectuals, scientists and educationists have already started calling him a Mr 420 and criminal. But the honeymoon of the semi literate middle class with this fake faqir will be over only when he drains them off their life, liberty and future”, said a very angry senior bureaucrat.