The data published at the worldometers website details that on March 24 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the national prolonged lockdown, there were cumulatively 536 coronavirus cases and 10 deaths.
While the figures have increased exponentially since, it is difficult to predict when these statistics will be lesser. No worthy epidemiologist will predict whether that point will be reached this year.
Optimistic politicians talk of us winning the war on coronavirus, to improve the depressed public sentiment and call for our collective resolve. Yet, the reality is that the virus is embedded in society, will remain at much higher levels than those that triggered the lockdown, may progress to subsequent waves that are worse with higher levels of transmissibility, morbidity and mortality.
Therefore, if at the end of the current lockdown our decision makers inevitably are forced to accept higher prevailing infection levels, then surely a future lockdown should necessitate a higher statistical trigger, at least a magnitude greater than those reported in government statistics to date.
Alternatively, the government needs to consider whether any further lockdown is necessary beyond all but the worst of the hotspots.
{{/usCountry}}Alternatively, the government needs to consider whether any further lockdown is necessary beyond all but the worst of the hotspots.
{{/usCountry}}WE CAN LIVE WITH IT
We now know much more about the fight that we are waging. Whatever the initial governmental failings, we are now better equipped in our hospitals and slowly our testing capabilities are being enhanced, though we still lag significantly Pakistan and Sri Lanka on a per capita basis.
We also know that most people, possibly as high as 95%, that get infected do not require hospitalisation, many of these are truly asymptomatic throughout. Of those hospitalised, the mortality rate is about 20%, with experts predicting an eventual fatality rate of below 1%; worse than regular flu but less than SARS, MERS and Ebola.
The Prime Minister, in his drive to make the lockdown effective, played to the inherent insecurities of a poor and fearful nation. In doing so, he created mass hysteria with each patient becoming an untouchable.
The Prime Minister calls for synchronised candle lights and a unified national spirit, but he has failed with his communications if his actions have resulted in the distressing and distasteful situation of families refusing to cremate their loved ones.
Modi needs to urgently convey to the masses that this disease is not the plague, nor smallpox, nor Spanish flu. It is a vicious condition, worse than most flu epidemics, but we can live with it, lead reasonably normal lives and salvage what there is left of a tattered economy.
Stop the extreme commotion behind each new case. Stop sealing entire neighbourhoods surrounding each new case when all we really need to do is to isolate the recent contacts of the patient.
FISCAL STIMULUS NEEDED, FAST
Lockdown works in reducing the spread of the infection, but the collateral damage is huge. The massive additional financial resources being allocated to support industry and social welfare, could be better repurposed for healthcare alone.
Contagion relief measures announced on March 23 by the finance minister are reported to cost Rs 1.7 lakh crores, which is less than 1% of GDP. It is shocking that more than a month later, the government has not felt compelled to revisit this.
Contrast this with many western governments announcing new relief measures almost weekly, in some cases already exceeding in aggregate 5% of GDP and with the distinct possibility of overall coronavirus related expenditure approaching some 15% of GDP or more in the short term.
This government needs to accept that its actions have exacerbated the situation, it needs to provide must greater fiscal stimulus expeditiously, even at the risk of inflation and currency depreciation, and it needs to move the fight from lockdown to testing, isolation, tracing and treatment. This can be done at a fraction of the cost of the relief measures announced and those in the pipeline.
NOT A RISK INDIA CAN TAKE
India does not have the resources to provide repetitive fiscal stimuli for each likely wave of this virus if each wave is to be accompanied by another lockdown.
Society must be allowed to live. Farmers must have a market. Business and industry must be allowed to operate. All within an environment where we test pervasively, isolate the infected and hospitalise those with severe symptoms.
Concentrate the resources on a testing and therapeutic strategy, save the livelihoods of hundreds of millions and resuscitate industry while there is still a chance.
Failing to do so and continuing to rely on repetitive lockdown will risk a prolonged depression, lasting possibly a generation.
If that sounds alarmist then look at the GDP data for Spain and Greece from 1928 to 1953, which took a generation to recover from the Great Depression.
This is not a risk that India can take.
The writer is a Congress leader and a former Punjab MLA. Views expressed are personal