Those of us who have been at the forefront of Covid management in West Bengal have known how tough and bumpy the ride has been. During the First Wave, Health Department officials in West Bengal, possibly like in many other parts of the country, worked for an average of 12-14 hours a day (14-16 hours a day on several occasions) for the first eight months without any kind of leave, weekend or otherwise. And while we just appeared to be past the worst and had started focusing on picking up the tousled skein of non-Covid services, the Second Wave of Covid-19 struck with vengeance.

However, as West Bengal was one of the best States in terms of Covid management during the First Wave, the lessons and experiences learnt during the previous surge came handy and we have, with due hand-holding from the Government, ensured that citizens in this part of the country don’t face any problem with respect to Covid treatment or other services without compromising on regular non-Covid services. While we can definitely keep on strengthening and reinforcing our health infrastructures and related services including vaccination, the experience also suggests that the disease has behaved very mysteriously and is still not amenable to complete comprehension of medical savants and experts.

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Notwithstanding all the precautions and discretions of complying with Covid-appropriate behaviour including social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, people continue to fall sick or lose lives across the world. There have been many instances of such people contracting Covid and losing their life despite the most cautious Covidappropriate behaviour. They include those who never stepped out of their home but still got infected, and those who were identified early and provided the best of treatment. While the First Wave saw higher fatality rate, Second Wave fatality has been less compared to the number of infections though in absolute terms it has claimed many more lives.

While First Wave sickness and deaths were few and far between, Second Wave has brought the pestilence and mortality closer to us, with most of us losing many near and dear ones. In fact, this list includes some big names who lost their lives despite getting the best of treatment. It is here that we feel helpless in front of the forces of nature and mysterious ways of Almighty’s invisible hand. Still, the pandemic has brought out the best and the worst in human beings since its first outbreak in Wuhan towards the end of 2019. There has been sick and nauseating human behaviour on display during the pandemic.

This includes a son killing his father for not wearing a mask, neighbours fighting over noncompliance with Covid-appropriate behaviour by some, neighbours forcing infected neighbours out of communities and beyond the neighbourhood after the latter contracted the disease, parents abandoning their Covid-infected children or children abandoning their Covid-infected parents, or relatives refusing to take back their kin even after they recovered from Covid.

Stories of Covid orphans after they lost both their parents or all their relatives, or of families being devastated after they lost their bread-earning members have generated enough pathos for the Government and the larger society to come up with different ways to extend institutional and societal helping hands for helping them pick up and rebuild their lives. This is definitely the worst of time that the humanity is undergoing; still, it is definitely the time to show our character as to why are we different from other species of Mother Nature. Homo Sapiens need to prove why they are the best creation of the Almighty. The nemesis that is Covid-19 and all the human efforts to tackle it notwithstanding, the truth remains that we humans are definitely helpless before nature.

No health system or administration can deal with a pandemic when it strikes on such a gargantuan scale. Covid-19 has shown for sure that it is not the dichotomy of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ or availability of better resources, but how good has been the planning and its execution by those at the helm of affairs that matters. That is why many supposedly better-endowed countries have fallen through while smaller, well-administered countries have fared better. India, for one, has definitely done much better compared to many other States around the world, given the multifarious constraints it has been faced with.

After all, the morbidity and mortality rate of Indians per million have been much less than what has been seen and reported in the First World developed countries. All said and done, one would also like to submit what has also been pointed out by many others. On a philosophical note, it does appear that God has been adumbrating at the prodigal ways in which humans have been splurging natural resources while also messing with the earth’s climate. It does appear that God has decided to reboot the system to auto-heal it and bring about homeostatic balance. So, all the while we were locking down human activities in our bid to stop the onward march of an unrelenting virus, nature was seemingly flourishing. With downscaled and downgraded human activities, less supplies were needed forcing the factories to be closed down thereby further putting a pause to the exploitation of natural resources including cutting of jungles.

With the global per capita income coming down as a result of pandemic, overall demand came down and thus came down the popular fixation with development. We definitely need to reduce those of our needs that stress nature and its resources. One year of Covid has taught us many things including the fact that our day-to-day life could be a lot less complex than we have made it. We can very well work from home without compromising overall productivity; or we can rediscover human relations by tearing our attention away from the artificial world of gadgets and mobile phones, or understand how artificial were many of the needs we deemed indispensable in the pre-Covid world.

While we continue to brace ourselves for the Third Wave of Covid or any such thing in future, we also need to pause and think of the advisability and sustainability of measures like ‘lockdowns’ for dealing with such a crisis. We can’t keep on locking down the system for dealing with future barrage of viruses and we also cannot continue resorting to social distancing as human existence would become meaningless without societal interactions. We need to find better ways and responses to deal with any such future events including putting in place a stronger system of social security.  As global problems warrant global responses, it is more than warranted that we come together to frame a joint response without being parochially protectionist or self-centred.

Our focus should also move away from treatment to prevention of the disease. As such, we definitely need to change our life style and modify our food habits without which we shall remain ever vulnerable to the onslaughts of such viruses in future. We need to find ways to repair and rebuild our earth and its ecosystem, while purposely inculcating a healthy and nature-friendly life style. Unless and until we appreciate this, we shall continue to feel helpless against an unseen enemy like Covid-19 virus which will continue mutating and presenting itself in newer forms.

(Concluded)

(The writer is an IAS officer, presently working as the Mission Director, National Health Mission and Secretary in the Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of West Bengal. The views are personal and not those of the government)