Virus gone Viral !

source-https://economictimes.indiatimes.com

7th of April is observed as World Health Day. This year's World Health Day has special significance given the crisis of health situation across the world. A small, tiny pathogen has brought the entire world to its knees including supposedly most powerful and advanced countries. 

Everyday all of us keep a tap on the rising numbers of Covid-19 patients in our region, nation and across the world. For millennials in countries like India, this is an unprecedented situation, never seen or even never heard before. It is also interesting to note that Covid-19 is first ever pandemic after rise of social media and that becaming inevitable part of all of our lives.( though social media certainly existed at the time of outbreak of MERS, recent Ebola epidemic, these diseases were limited to certain parts of the world and also social media was not that entrenched as it is today) Therefore social media has provided another medium for the virus to spread and expand. 

Though the existence of social media has given some novelty to this ongoing pandemic, epidemiologists tell us that this is nothing new per say. Epidemics and pandemics have been in existence since ages. Probably in history textbooks some of us must have read about bubonic plague, black death etc. We are awed by the number of deaths by these diseases. But it must be remembered that these are not the numbers for the sake of it but behind these numbers, there are relatives and families that get devastated, there are doctors and nurses that get frustrated. Therefore it is essential that we must learn something from the past pandemics, beyond the numbers involved. So here I will try to extract four lessons from four stories of past epidemics/pandemics:

1. Hiding the data and suppressing the news regarding pandemic is disastrous. So never do that:

It was the year 1911 and Italy had arranged the huge celebrations of 50th anniversary of birth of Kingdom of Italy. Authorities wanted it to be the biggest of its kind celebration without any obstruction. But unfortunately the Cholera outbreak started in Italy in the same year. 

Government authorities were alerted by the health department. But the government was stubborn and wanted the celebration to go unhindered without any blot on it. Therefore authorities decided to hide the information from public and world community and deny the fact that there was any outbreak in the country. Even the media personnel were bribed to suppress the news. All the telegrams which had the word cholera in them were intercepted and censored. The 50th anniversary celebrations went smooth but common people and their families paid the huge price. Remember, Cholera has 50% mortality rate if not treated rapidly.  

So never hide genuine information, this is applicable to both governments and people as well.

2. Trust the public health professionals. Immoral capitalism harms the larger public interest. 

This is again a story of Cholera outbreak of 1832 in the city that never sleeps, The New York. Some information came to the civic body of New York city that Cholera outbreak has started in Canada. The public officials were alerted as the Hudson river, Erie canal  which used to supply water to the city might get contaminated because of this. Therefore some doctors were sent to Canada to take the stock of the situation. 

The doctor came out with the hot-spot map showing that New York will certainly suffer from Cholera outbreak in Canada and strongly advised that the canal water and river water must be quarantined and be cleaned. Till then health personnel suggested to use alternate water supply sources for the city. 

But there was this private company namely Manhattan Company which used to supply drinking water to the city and surrounding areas. Also there were many brewery companies in the area. All these companies were commercially dependent on the water from River Hudson and Erie Canal. Therefore these companies were panicked by the proposal of quarantine of this water. They aggressively lobbied to the then government to cancel the proposal. Not only that but they also peddled the false theory of miasma i.e. bad smell. So they created the public opinion through media etc. that Cholera is spread by the bad smell and not through the water. The bad smell was attributed to the poor, laborers etc. And that year experienced spike in number of cases of violence against poors and specially Irish workers etc on the ground that they are spreading bad smell across the city. 

The Manhattan company flourished, breweries around the are earned a lot. (As a matter of fact, the then Manhattan  Company is today's JP Morgan Chase &Co., one of the multi-billion investment bank.) And around 2% of population of New York that year died because of Cholera (or because of greedy capitalism?)

So reposing the faith in public health institutions, their advises and their work is very essential.

3. Modern day pandemics demand all-out and comprehensive solutions. Unidimesional solutions are bound to fail.

There was outbreak of Dengue in Florida recently in 2009. Historically, Florida has always been hot-spot of dengue because of dengue prone climate and such areas surrounding it. 

The outbreak in 2009 was immediately responded as if it was only the bio-medical problem alone. The medical treatments, vaccines, drugs and entire health department was mobilized to track and contain the spread of it. Eventually though it was contained, the root cause was neglected for long.

And surprisingly root cause was not merely bio-medical but 'socio-politico-economical'. In 2008, USA and world was hit by worst financial crisis. It also resulted into foreclosure crisis. Foreclosure crisis crudely means that if homeowner fails to repay the loan, then lender can evict the homeowner and seize the property. Many such houses were seized and remained abandoned. Many of them boasted of swimming pools in them. Now abandoned houses means abandoned swimming pools. With rains in that year, all these abandoned swimming pools were filled up with water and acted as hatcheries for Dengue spreading mosquitoes. Certainly there were many other factors like suitable climate, surrounding dengue-prone areas like Cuba, Haiti etc. which also assisted this outbreak of, but the foreclosure crisis as important factor that remained neglected for long. 

Therefore modern day pandemics demand comprehensive solutions- biomedical, sociological, anthropological, administrative, psychological etc. 

4. Naming the pandemic and blaming the others might help to get score some points on diplomatic front. But it fails to help change ground realities.

We all have heard of World War-1, fought between 1914 to 1918. It is a part of our collective memory, specially of Europe. But what is not remembered, unfortunately, is the Spanish Flu which invaded Europe and then entire world immediately after World war-1 in 1918 and lasted till 1920. 

Europe had the recent bruises of WW-I and enmity, hatred between the countries was still there. Media was highly under censorship in countries like Germany, France, Britain, Italy etc. Therefore true reporting about the death tolls in a particular country was difficult task. On the contrary Spain was relatively neutral country and media had comparatively free access. Therefore media could report about the real impact of flu only from Spain. Therefore diplomatically the picture was created that only Spain is suffering from this flu and thus was named conveniently as 'Spanish Flu'. 

The countries gave priority to manage the public image of the country rather than real efforts of containment. Even history also gives more significance to WW-I in which around 20 million died compared to this Flu pandemic in which around 40 million died as per one conservative estimate. 

Thus as it is very clear that epidemics and pandemics have always been in existence. We need to acquire not just immunity from the past pandemics but also wisdom and vision to effectively tackle the future ones. 

Sources:

-'Pandemic' by Sonia Shah
-'Spillover' by David Quammen
-'No time to loose' by Peter Piot
- www.history.com