COVID19 DAY 16-21 (14.4.2020)

A SHOCK FOR MASS SOCIETY

On the 21^st day of the lockdown, the prime minister announced that it would be extended till May. Rumours fuelled uncertainties as many had expected the lockdown to be lifted substantially on April 15. Looking at the situation, it was a pre-eminently sensible decision. The number testing positive has crossed the half million mark in the United States with deaths rising to 26,000. Worldwide this virus has claimed more than 125,000 lives and has infected more than two million. By and large lockdowns are being continued around the world.

As the pandemic rages it has come as a big blow to mass society said to have been born with the French Revolution of 1789. Most affected are three categories of people whose careers are tied up closely with mass society – sportsmen, entertainers and politicians. Though newspapers have reduced the number of pages in cost cutting efforts, the sports page has shrunk to just one side. The Olympic extravaganza has been put off, not only severely depriving sportsmen of competition, but media of content of all kinds. It appears as if it will definitely be some years before we go back to stadiums to watch big ticket games.

But sportsmen are not the only ones to be affected. The entertainment industry is in shambles since all cinema theatres are shut and social distancing means that shooting of films and serials are off. If and when it resumes, it cannot be said whether the heroes and heroines will appear in masks in the future. We’ve already had masked comic characters like ‘The Phantom’ or ‘Batman’ but the imagination stretches to the limit at the thought of masked protagonist. Akshay Kumar is appear to be no different from Shahrukh Khan. We may be able to make out Anupam Kher due to his bald pate but we will miss out on the most important element of acting – expressions while dialogues will be muffled at best. In any case, most films will look like the Wild West Hollywood movies with masked gunmen or Bollywood dacoit films of the ‘60s and ‘70s in which people like Sunil Dutt made their careers. The advertising industry too has to look for new ways of promoting products instead of riding on well known faces from sports or entertainment. They will also have to figure out new ways of brand building.  

But it seems the worst affected are politicians who are at their wits end to find ways of keeping in the public mind. Of course, our prime minister can always give ‘messages’ on television to the people. But he has to be careful not to repeat it too often as it will lose its novelty. The American president carries out daily briefings for the press and gets upset when news channels threaten not to carry them live. For him this is the crucial election year and there is no other way of campaigning other than these briefings as thousands of Americans have already lost their lives. Mr. Trump bashes the media people as he can’t get his hands on his opponents at debates and campaign speeches. And the only way in which he can stay in the limelight is to make outrageous statements because he knows very little about the COVID19 virus. The Indian National Congress has of course come up with the wonderful idea of online daily online briefings which not only save money but also enable them to showcase regional leaders.

Let us see what the future upholds for these unfortunate people.

COVID19 DAY 15 (8.4.2020)

THE SMILING ELEPHANT

The Novel Corona Virus is not an accident or a conspiracy sprung to destroy countries. It is typical of human nature to look for a scapegoat when trouble looms over our head. As indiscriminate charges fly about, the death and destruction caused by the virus only mounts, adding to our miseries. Our food habits too have changed considerably as now most of our non-vegetarian demands are met with the help of large-scale animal farming. It is believed that it is here that the transmission of the virus from the wild to humans have occurred through the intermediary of the animals that are grown specially for the table in farms.

The last few scenes of the 2011 film ‘Contagion’ are significant. They show how exactly the virus travelled from the wild to the human. The starting point was the bat that was eating a banana at a plantation and accidentally dropped a bit that was consumed by a pig that was being grown for the table. That is how it was transmitted to a human. However, the last scene is particularly disturbing as it shows the destruction of palm trees where bats live to get rid of the source of dangerous viruses. Bats would not have entered into our food cycle but for the destruction of their habitats and food sources. The message is that nature will have to be destroyed to ensure our protection from, among other things, pathogens.

But this may not be necessary if we learn to respect and live with nature which is as essential for our survival as vaccines that protect us from pathogens. In our race for industrial development and search for minerals we destroy forests, the habitat of a large part of nature (including ourselves). This has not been the human approach through history, specially in India. Here nature was looked upon as a harmonious whole consisting of animals, plants, man and even so-called inanimate objects. That is why even animals were endowed with emotions just like man as is depicted in the ‘Smiling Elephant’ as it appears in a drawing at Amber Palace, near Jaipur. The picture of this drawing was taken by Benoy K. Behl in 2001. “The smile on the face of the elephant and the twinkle in his eye are remarkable!” says Behl. 

'The Smiling Elephant' at Amber Palace, Jaipur. (photo by Benoy k. Behl

“This is a most difficult time that the world is passing through. However, we do have a choice to use it to look at ourselves, rethink our lives, take care of all that is around us and to reshape a better future for this planet.  We will have achieved something positive and learnt something very important even in the midst of our crisis. We are very fortunate to have a heritage of a great philosophy, which has always taught us universal love and the interconnection of all creation, including us, animals, the trees and rivers,” Behl adds.

COVID19 DAY 14 (7.4.2020)

ELABORATING DR. BRILLIANT

I must point out the Dr. Brilliant’s interview was carried by the American news journal ‘Wired’ and taken on phone by Steven Levy on March 19, 2020. A condensed version was reproduced on the website of ‘Seva-Canada’.( https://www.seva.ca/news/doctor-who-helped-defeat-smallpox-explains-whats-coming ).Seva is an organisation that Dr. Brilliant helped form and which helps in fighting pandemics.

There are a couple of points that he made in the interview that needs to be highlighted so that we can make an informed guess about how long this atmosphere of uncertainty lasts and the world finds its feet. The first is on whether lockdown by itself can end the pandemic. Dr. Brilliant’s answer is ‘no’. The lockdown will spread out the disease over time. “By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine—which we will, because there's nothing in the virology that makes me frightened that we won’t get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months,"feels Dr. Brilliant. Eventually the human species is going to get "herd immunity"from a combination of two two things - a large enough number of people get it and develop immunity and second, the development of a vaccine. So, the time frame at which he is looking is between a year and a year-and-a-half for things to begin to normalise. He sums up the situation with a metaphor, "If this were a tennis match, I would say advantage virus right now." So there has to be increased testing and early detection and early response to eliminate the virus completely.  

The second point that he makes is the potential damage due to the irresponsible comments by the American President. “But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime." But he holds out hope, particularly for Americans that they have a man like Dr. Antonio Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Communicable Diseases, in-charge of matters. 

COVID19 DAY12&13 (6.4.2020)

“I AM THE LUCKIEST MAN…I SAW THE LAST CASE OF SMALL POX

These were the words of American epidemiologist Dr. Lawrence Brilliant, who I mentioned in my last entry. He was in the World Health Organisation (WHO) team that ended the career of deadly small pox in India and also Bangladesh. Rahima Banu was the name of the last victim. Dr. Brilliant is now 75 but luckily for us he is still actively giving advice on the current pandemic, bringing to bear on it his vast experience. Much as we need doctors, we also need the experience of people who have dealt with such diseases in the past. So many people died in the tsunami that struck India in 2004 because no living person had a memory of it and therefore people were unable to gauge the danger. 

Dr. Larry Brilliant and his wife Girija

Dr. Brilliant, like many other members of that WHO team including Indians, is quite an offbeat doctor if one can call him that. After his internship he came to India, like many of his back-pack contemporary looking for spiritual upliftment. Dr. Brilliant’s journey, along with his wife Girija, has been unusual and he did get the spiritual upliftment that he was seeking. In this quest, he met Neem Karoli Baba and stayed at his Ashram at Kainchi Dham near Nainital for some time. The Baba, a devotee of Lord Hanuman, changed Brilliant’s life forever when he asked him to shed his kurta and pyjama and put on a three-piece suit and work in the WHO. The Doctor, the Baba predicted would end the scourge of small pox from India. Many credited the Baba with supernatural powers but this prediction of his came true.

Dr. Brilliant has settled in the up-market Bay Area of Los Angeles, USA with his wife and three children. Though he never adopted an ascetic life and lives in luxury, he continues his love affair with India and other Asian and African nations helping them out of their difficulties in health care. It seems that the good doctor has been endowed with powers of future forecasting, probably a blessing from his Guru who died in 1973. About 14 years back he had spoken of just such an epidemic as the world is witnessing today. He was speaking at a TED talk in 2006, Dr. Brilliant said many epidemiologists feared the outbreak of a virus epidemic that could infect a billion people worldwide and result in 165 million deaths. He had said that it would be like nothing like what people had seen till then. “There will be no airplanes flying,” was his ominous forecast and the US economy would lose one to three trillion dollars and the “consequences will be unthinkable.” A group of top epidemiologists he had spoken to had felt that it would occur within the next generation or the one after that. Dr. Brilliant was also the chief technical advisor of the 2011 film ‘Contagion’ that has suddenly become very popular again. It seems he was pretty accurate and the unthinkable has happened.

What does Dr. Brilliant have to say now? Well, he revealed that at least the United States has not just walked into the epidemic with its eyes open but the administration has even worked to dismantle the team that had been part of the National Security Council. And this had been happening for the past couple of years. The Washington Post reported in May, 2018 that the top White House official responsible for leading the US response in the event of a deadly pandemic had left the administration and the global health security team he headed had been disbanded by National Security Advisor John Bolton, a Trump supporter. The man who headed the team was retired Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer. “I mean Trump pushed out the admiral… And then Trump removed the (early warning) funding for countries all around the world.”

“That there is no human being in the world that has immunity as a result of having had it before. That means it’s capable of infecting 7.8 billion of our brothers and sisters … But there's going to be tens of millions of us or hundreds of millions of us or more who will get this virus before it's all over, and with large numbers like that, almost anything where you ask “Does this happen?” can happen.” See what you can make of it.

COVID19 DAY 10&11

SURVEILLANCE AND CONTAINMENT OF THE SPECKLED MONSTER

Europe and the United States of America continue to be the hot-spots of corona virus as the number of people infected by this deadly pathogen has reached one-and-quarter million and the number of deaths has touched 65,000. Going by the numbers, the situation in India does not seem to be as alarming and many are hoping for an early calling off of the lockdown that has brought the country to a halt. However, this may be deceptive as recent statistics reveal that the speed with which people in India are getting infected is accelerating. Be that as it may, the world seems to be in for the long haul and it doesn’t look like the virus is going to go away anytime soon. Three months have gone by but scientists are still racing to find a vaccine. Many experts have estimated that it may take as much as 18 months before the vaccine becomes available. So, what will the world be like in the meantime? And how are we going to take care of the situation till then and even afterwards with this deadly infective virus around.

It is possible that the recent outbreak has been the result of complacency, particularly on the part of countries that have been long industrialised and have excellent health care systems. It is also a reminder to the less fortunate countries whose health care systems are not much to write home about. Maybe we have lost the touch as it has been nearly half a century since the last great campaign to get rid of another deadly killer disease – small pox – was undertaken. Maybe Indians will do well to recall the strategies adopted with the help of the World Health Organisation to eliminate small pox that had achieved such great success.

The strategy adopted at that time is known as “ring vaccination” or “surveillance and containment” as it was officially called. This in effect was like ring fencing a forest fire in which a band of trees is cut down around those that are on fire to stop it from spreading. And mind you this had to be adopted after mass vaccinations had failed to wipe out the disease. A little less than 200,000 cases had still been reported from 8,000 villages in 1974. So, 150,000 trained field workers fanned out to India’s 575,721 villages and 2,641 towns and cities, according to records of the massive campaign donated to the University of Michigan Library, USA, by Dr. Lawrence Brilliant, a member of this large team.

Dr. Brilliant’s own story is worth recalling though. Relating it in a TED talk, he said that soon after graduating in 1967, he came to India “like everyone in our generation.” There he ended up in a Himalayan monastery where the Guru predicted that he would help eradicate small pox. So what is the mantra that Dr. Brilliant discovered to contain small pox? “Early detection, early response.” He said that “small pox made its last stand in India” but his mantra meant that there would have to be wide surveillance. This became possible due to the full backing of the government which made money and a large team available for the WHO team.

Dr. Brilliant, however, found a strange thing. “Every time we did a house-to-house search we had a spike in the number of reports of small pox. When we didn’t search, we had the illusion that we had no disease.” Often there was under-reporting perhaps due to economic reasons or stigma or simply religious beliefs. (Utkarsh, a final year journalism student has written a piece in his blog ‘Decoding the Social Stigma’ on stigma that is accompanying the current COVID19 pandemic in India  available at the following link: https://truthadvocator.home.blog/2020/04/04/decoding-the-social-stigma/ . “It was the largest campaign in United Nations’ history till the Iraq war,” recalled Dr. Brilliant in a lecture delivered in 2006. More about Dr. Brilliant in the next entry.

A Cartoon from the 19th century from the anti-Vaccine Society(Roots of Progress)

Here I would like to mention the good work done by Jason Crawford, https://rootsofprogress.org/smallpox-and-vaccines   apparently an American on uncovering not only the progress of developing a vaccine for small pox but has also mentioned some of the controversies involved in his blog ‘Roots of Progress’. He has also used an excellent cartoon on the vaccination effort by doctors in Europe which I have reproduced here. Like the COVID19, the small pox virus (variola) can strike anyone. It had no respect for weak or powerful, rich or poor or even for religious persuasion. Small pox has claimed the lives of many high and mighty like Ramses V, a 12^th century B.C. Egyptian Pharaoh. According to Jason, it struck George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, though both of them survived it.

Edward Jenner is credited with have developed the vaccine for small pox through the cow pox, a less virulent strain of the same disease. But inoculation was known to people in Asia and Africa for a long time. It was noticed that those who survived small pox never got it again. So, people took the liquid from the body of a person who had the disease and injected it in their own bodies. They developed the same symptoms but in a milder form though some also died. But those who survived got immunity for life. This process was known as inoculation. Jenner and other Western doctors then refined the vaccine. But on one matter, I disagree with Jason when he claims credit for the West and capitalism for all the great developments of recent centuries. The West was prompted by selfish motives to colonise large parts of the world but for which large numbers of indigenous people, as he himself admits, would not have been wiped out because of diseases imposed on them by their aggressors. And the latest pandemic is clearly the result of that very capitalism that promoted globalisation after 1991.

COVID19 LOCKDOWN DAY 8&9 (2.4.2020)

MAN AND NATURE

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson termed the steps taken in Britain to check the pandemic as a “national fightback against the Corona virus… by staying at home we are going to beat it and beat it together”. This sums up the western approach pretty neatly … that life consists of a constant struggle against the chaotic forces of nature and progress consists of defeating these forces and bringing them under control. Recall the words of English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who said felt that the state of nature was that of war of all against all. This way of thinking has quickly spread to many parts of the world and man’s mission in life seems to be taming nature.

I am reminded of a trip some years back to the Pueblo cliff dwellings at Manitou Springs in Colorado in the United States. Just like at other archaeological sites, descriptions about the site and the people who lived there were engraved on stone and concrete. Now Manitou Springs is located in the Rocky Mountains, the mountain chain that runs from north to south in western United States. What struck me most was a piece which said that the Pueblos who lived there called mountain range as ‘Shining Mountains” as they had a lot of metallic ore veins that sparkled in the sun. When European immigrants saw the place, they called the mountains the Rockies. So, while the indigenous Americans chose to note the beauty and man’s harmony with the mountainside, the European-Americans emphasised the toughness of “taming” the rocks to get at the metals – looked merely as a resource to be used for the benefit of man.

So, the West looks at the world in terms of conquering it. That is why they ‘conquer’ the North Pole, the Everest, the South Pole or the highest and toughest mountains putting their lives in danger. Indians lived with the tallest mountains of the world for centuries but it never occurred to them to conquer them. Many Indian sages are believed to have retired to the high Himalayas for meditation but they did not leave any signboards. Not only did the British think it essential to measure the mountains but also to reach its peak but in the process set off a procession that continues to this not just leading to tons of garbage being left on the Himalayas but also leading to ‘traffic jams’ of climbers. The legacy has been carried forward in Bengal where many people are madly eager to scale the Everest and other tall peaks.

As against this habit of plundering and conquering nature, the Indian and Oriental way of thinking envisioned a harmonious one-ness of nature and man. Humans were part of nature and were not meant to exploit it. This is evident in the centuries old philosophy whose remains are to be found among the Buddhist sculptures, stone carvings and frescos. A beautiful rendering of this is the composite creature found as a wall carving in the Sanchi stupa. 

COMPOSITE CREATURE, SANCHI STUPA (PHOTO BY BENOY K. BEHL)

The photograph has been taken by Benoy Behl who brought it to my notice. this joyous depiction. It is a composite creature, says Behl who has made many documentaries on Indian art and architecture. “The depiction displays the oneness of all life forms. It is such a delightful and happy creature, with the qualities of an elephant, cow, deer and even a horse. All of creation is seen in a vision full of warmth.

In today’s time, the message from Indian art and philosophy is of the oneness of all beings, human, animal, birds…It is time to stop being cruel to bats, chicken, all animals, trees…nature.”

COVID19 DAY 7 (31.3.2020)

SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION

SITALA MATA (FROM A KALIGHAT PATA PAINTING)

Several thoughts come to my mind as the lockdown enters its seventh day. The one that strikes most is this old debate between science and superstition. Among Bengalis for instance there was a belief that keeping the Sitala Mata happy was the best protection against the scourge of small pox, one of the deadliest diseases that mankind has ever known. This one single disease perhaps killed more people in India than any other infectious disease as recently as 1974, as many as 188,000 cases were reported from India, according to an online exhibit at the University of Michigan library. Over the years millions lost their lives due to small pox and even the ‘60s India accounted for more than half of small pox cases in the world. But this disease was wiped out of the country by the middle of 1975, mainly by the administration of mass vaccinations.

So, the battle in the case of small pox was won by science rather than faith in the powers of deities. Of course, the Sitala deity has now been entrusted with many other ‘portfolios’ following the eradication of the disease. But perhaps the problem arises from a confusion in people’s minds between faith and superstition. Does a black cat crossing the path result in bad luck? Now that is pure superstition as there is absolutely no evidence to support this assumption. Nobody has yet cleared a doubt – does this rule hold good if the black cat’s tail has a white tip? Yet I have seen many educated people change course when their paths are crossed by a black cat.

Then there is the matter of mascots. Sportsmen are said to be most susceptible to mascots. Famous football players have quirky beliefs about actions that they think will bring them success. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, makes sure that its always his right foot that crosses the line first as he enters the field and he also the last to come out of the tunnel. Former England player David Beckham was known to clean a fridge before matches as it got his team victories. Many people also have strong beliefs in evil or good omens. Somebody sneezing just as you are leaving a place is considered to be an ill omen. On the other hand, an itchy left palm is promise of wealth flowing into the coffers. Another one is the twitching of eye-lids which usually is believed to portend misfortune.

Faith is quite another thing and unlike superstitions has a certain logic. There is the old story about Tulsidas and his faith in Lord Ram. He wrote something on a chit of paper and gave it to a man who found that with it in his hand he could walk on the water in the river in spate. Curious, he opened the chit to find the name of Lord Ram written on it and thought “its only Ram” and began to sink. “This is not your Ram…this is Tulsi’s Ram,” shouted Tulsidas from the river bank. Whether or not this incident actually happened is not material. What it speaks of is the power of Tulsidas’s faith in the Lord. Faith, and its close relative trust, plays a huge role in life. In fact, life would be virtually impossible without faith and trust.

But superstition is not as dangerous as half-baked scientific knowledge. United States President Donald Trump for instance said that chloroquine promised to be the wonder drug that would control COVID19 as health experts in his administration standing next to him squirmed and could only say that this was based on anecdotal evidence which means virtually no evidence at all. Similar are reports that say that consuming large amounts of tea would help control the virus and that is how the Chinese had succeeded. No scientific evidence based on logic to confirm this exists but many people actually believe in it. Cow urine and cow dung fall into this category as well. Had they really worked our leaders would not be so alarmed as to order a lockdown at all. There is enough of both in India.

In sum, while faith is important, superstition is dangerous in crisis situations like the present one as it could mean the difference between life and death. Faith, however, takes one through life giving strength to face its many problems and successes. One need not depend on some magic in which Lord Ganesh drinks milk to have faith in the deity. It is enough to know that he is the lord of the intellect and faith in him will help intellectual pursuits.