NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING

One more month has passed with the world grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is increasingly becoming clearer that nobody knows anything.

1. Number of cases: For all the discussion and debate about the number of COVID-19 cases in a country such as India, fact remains that the numbers we all are seeing for the number of new cases/active cases are pure fiction. We all know that as of May 10^th 2020, the total number of cases in India are not 60,000 but a multiple of this number. What multiple? 10x, 20x, 100x…have your pick. So any discussion around the number of cases based on the ‘official tally’ is total bunkum and nobody knows the true number of cases in India as of date.
2. Flattening the Curve: For all the talk of the medical experts around flattening the curve, the curve is nowhere near flattening despite nearly 50 days of lockdown. Which brings us back to the previous point, how can you even judge whether the curve is flattening when the base data you are looking at is a falsity. The number of new cases each day is not a function of how many are getting infected each day, but a function of how many we are testing each day. And since the number of tests each day are continuously going up, having increased from 16,000 per day a month back to 80,000 per day now, obviously the number of ‘new cases’ reported per day would have increased by at least five-fold. Nobody knows when the curve will flatten as nobody has visibility of the ‘real curve’ and everyone is shooting in the dark with numbers and timelines.
3. Lockdown: The lockdown was supposed to help flatten the curve, but this has not happened. You can hear ‘experts’ commentary on how it has reduced the transmission rate, but it will again come back to the same point…when you do not know the true number of cases in India, how can you comment on whether or not the Lockdown has succeeded in this objective. Furthermore, nobody knew or anticipated the actual consequences of the lockdown that have now come to pass, including the immense economic anguish, the tragic plight of the migrant labour, the mishaps such as the Vizag gas leak and the riots and agitations as seen in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
4. The Disease: Every other day you see new reports and conjectures about the disease itself. Nobody knows whether the disease can transmit through air particles or not. Nobody knows whether the disease causes death through pneumonia or thrombosis. Nobody knows whether ventilators are really required for treating the disease or not. Nobody knows whether the disease will be treated with anti-pyretics, or oxygen support or anti-virals or anti-malarials. Everyone is just doing hit and trial.
5. The Cure & The Vaccine: Nobody knows when a cure or a vaccine will be available. There are all ‘expert’ estimations and projections but nothing concrete. One would think 6 months into a disease the so-called experts would have a better handle on this, but no. While some are projecting a vaccine should be available by July, others project it to be available by January 2021 and someone said that a vaccine may not be available ever!
6. The Recoveries: As with the number of infected cases, there is no true information about the number of recoveries either. Suffice to say that just like the number of infected cases, the number of recoveries would also be a much bigger multiple of the current number of 19,000 as many many Indians would have gotten infected asymptomatically or with mild symptoms and recovered.
7. Testing: All the advocates of aggressive testing and isolation and such sophisticated strategies also don’t know the basics of multiplication and extrapolation. They thus lack a clear game plan in their recommendations. Currently India is testing 100,000 persons daily. At this rate it would take us 35 years to test and isolate everyone. Even if we test 10 times this number, it will still take us 3.5 years. Needless to say, in 3.5 years we would need to test everyone again as at the end of 3.5 years, the persons who were tested in year 3 and turned out positive would have had interactions with persons who turned out negative in years 1 and 2. The testing cycle would thus be never ending. What would be the proposal of such ‘test advocators’ then? To keep everyone in lockdown till everyone is tested? Within 3.5 years or longer?
8. The Functioning of Business: Unfortunately, the bureaucrats and the policy framers also don’t know how businesses function and are formulating guidelines in vacuum. You cannot restart businesses ‘zone wise’ where movement of labour and logistics are not smoothly calibrated. You cannot have construction activity start where there is no labour to load/unload materials and you cannot start industries and trade where parts of their supply chain are located in ‘red zones’ which are not allowed to start. This explains why the economy is still sputtering despite the ‘well intentioned’ guidelines to relax lockdown w.e.f. 4^th May 2020. Clearly nobody knows how business is done on the ground.

What we do know as hard facts:

1. The Deaths: The number of deaths reported are hard facts. It may well be argued by many that deaths are also underreported, but in a country such as ours it is not feasible anymore for thousands to perish and such deaths in large numbers go unreported. Even if there is ‘mis-classification’ of deaths as ‘non-COVID19’ deaths, one could safely assume the real number of deaths to be a percentage higher than the currently reported deaths and not a number very far off from the same. The deaths reported as on date are 2000 approximately.
2. The Criticalities: The number of patients in ICUs and on Ventilator support are also well known as a hard fact. As of May 2020, globally this number is less than 50,000 when compared to the total number of active cases of 24 lac approximately. In Delhi, as shared by the CM, this number is 91 against total reported cases of 5,000 with 27 out of the 91 being on ventilator.
3. The Fear-Mongering Was Just That: We all saw the fear-mongering and the models of the epidemiologists in one form or another a few months back. Projecting cases north of 10 million in India, and deaths in millions too. The same fear-mongering in developed nations by leading institutions including WHO is what has led to the global lockdown and economic meltdown of an unprecedented scale. What has actually turned out after over 6 months of the Pandemic? Total global deaths are less than 300,000 i.e. less than 2000 deaths on an average per infected country and less than 0.004% of the global population. In India too the number of deaths are 2000…nowhere close to the millions that were projected. As a percentage, the number of deaths is less than 3% if you consider the ‘reported cases’ and well below 1% if you consider a multiple of the ‘reported cases’ to be the true number of cases and less than 0.00015% of the Indian population.
4. Social Distancing: For all the preaching and messaging about social distancing and precautions, the vast majority of the Indians will not follow these measures and will forget these best practices in good time. Whether it is the wearing of masks, washing of hands, or maintaining social distance. We all bore witness to this in the protest at Bandra and more recently when the liquor shops were opened. So what will you do? Keep everyone locked down forever? You cannot do that and this is also known as a hard fact.
5. The Economic Hurt: While many economic pundits and industrialists and sounded alarm bells much in advance about the disastrous consequences of the lockdown, the Governments across the Globe still went ahead as a herd mentality. It has been correctly said that this would not have happened so had it not been for the ‘western countries’ getting so affected by the Pandemic. As for Asia and Africa, we have experienced many infectious diseases in the past and weathered the storm without enforcing lockdowns. But now that the lockdown has started to hit home even with the Governments seeing their tax revenues shrink to a fraction in April 2020, the realization has dawned that the lockdown is not the cure and at most can be ‘justified’ as having bought you time to put medical infrastructure in place. Unlike developed countries, India cannot afford the socio-economic consequences of such a lockdown.

What then shall be done, in light of what is known and what is not known?

1. Lift the lockdown from 17^th
2. Allow everything to open except the ‘Containment Zones’.
3. Allow cross border movements within the country – only then can the businesses run with streamlined labour and material supply chains. Our country’s economy is not designed for each State to function on a stand-alone basis.
4. Have only a list of negative activities which will continue to be restricted.
5. Keep the frail and aged protected.
6. Try and enforce social distancing and precautionary measures to the extent you can, without having very high expectations.
7. Stop chasing the numbers and curves.
8. Prepare your hospital beds and ICUs for about 5% of the projected cases (whatever body’s projections you want to adopt).
9. Treat those who report for treatment with symptoms and stop bothering about ‘sophisticated issues’ such as ‘community transmission’ and ‘flattening the curve’.

As for all of us, we need to tune out the noise and start living our life everyday rather than hiding in a shell and moving one day closer to death with passing of each precious day that we waste doing nothing.

Published on www.anshumankhanna.in

© Anshuman Khanna. May 2020