Corona Diaries

Official Corona count has reached to 17 Lakh today. More than 55000 people were reported to be infected on a daily basis. But India has begun unlock and people are roaming on the streets carelessly. The mask has become like a Helmet. People wear it not for the purpose of safety but for the purpose of avoiding challans and penalties. The government, police, people are clueless about the seriousness of the disease.

 On one hand, the government has restricted the number of people at the wedding to 50 and people at the funeral to 20 but Prime minister himself is participating in the celebration of Ram temple Shilanyas. Similarly, the lockdown guidelines are in place but life has become normal once again. People can be found roaming around freely. While the cases are nearing 17 Lakh per day, the infected count is seen reducing in Delhi and Mumbai. Therefore, a common man stands confused about whether to take the disease seriously or not. 

The possible reason for this confusion is possibly inaccurate reporting by the government. Because of this, people and the government itself are not sure about extent, fatality, and seriousness of the disease. The extreme cacophony created by media about the disease adds further to the confusion. When the cases were 500, the whole country has come to standstill and Media created huge hue and cry about it. Migration, job loss became the talk of the town. Now when cases are inching to 20 Lakh and possibly 1 crore in a few months from now, media is busy in covering the Rajasthan crisis and celebrating Ram Bhoomi pooja. Rather than critically evaluating government, media seems to speak in government tone and language.

One can only hope that India does not witness a black Friday type moment where suddenly the cases shot up from 50 thousand per day to 5 lakh the next day due to the virality of the infection. Our health system and social fabric collapsed when India had 500 cases among 134 crore population. What would happen if cases shot up suddenly? There would be chaos and casualties everywhere. 

Hope that our scientists act fast and document the disease in a proper manner. Hope that the government increases the testing and reports the actual numbers. Hope people understand the seriousness of the disease and take precautionary measures. and hope our social fabric withstand the onslaught of Corona and doesn't become colored.