Coronavirus Part 29, Failed Democracies and Failed Vaccination

 

              It just happened that I dedicated entire past post to covid-19 in the country. The seriousness of the issue warrants such reactions. There has been 300% increase in the average daily cases across the country for a good part of the month. If this doesn’t prompt you to act what else will. The country is recording the worlds highest number of cases in a day for the past many days. Even U.S. is not ravaged this hard in terms of number of daily cases. The country is accounting for 50% of the cases worldwide. This is not at all the position to be in as we are propagating more cases and deaths across the world. We need to solve the problem for the sake of the country and for a virus-free world. This has to be done as quickly as possible. The helpless Indians have been ravaged by the free flowing virus in the past one month.

              India is just second in terms of total number of cases worldwide which is topped by US. My home and second-home nations occupied the first two positions of the virus podium. I still don’t understand how to read this. Why these two nations are in particular hit very hard. Both the countries are largest democracies, gives full freedom to its demanding citizens and are very similar in functioning as far as I saw and felt. The communist nature of China didn’t allow the virus in its country to bring the citizens to their knees. Rather than democracy and freedom, communism and fear put the virus at bay. The state should have control over the people and people should have fear for the state. This model is extremely successful in this corona world. China has less than 1 lakh cases in total since beginning. Both India and U.S. should learn with folded hands from China about how to control a pandemic. Both are irresponsible countries which are causing needless suffering and needless deaths of its people. China should be given the best country in the world award for its functioning, administration, governance and safe-guarding its citizens through the harrowing times of covid-19.

             But how did India come to this state of misery after more than a year of Covid-19 in the 21^st century of science and technology. Why couldn’t we act faster and react faster using the modern day scientific tools. What is the use of modern day science when it cannot solve a problem from a recurring second wave and third wave. What is the use of everyone responsible – scientific community, government etc. when they cannot leverage the modern day tools to ease the problems of people. The reason is science has lost the trust in itself which has resulted in lethargic response to the pandemic.

            When the world is upended by the pandemic, how do you react – in a war mode. But the reaction is more medieval than modern which has permitted recurring waves to wreak havoc on the poor people. Just to talk about an important area, why can’t the countries vaccinate the citizens on a war footing. Vaccination in the legacy world is to prevent a disease, death. But vaccination in the covid world is astronomically more than that. From saving lives to livelihoods to keeping the countries back on track, everything is possible with vaccination. When so much importance has been placed on a vaccine, it should be given to the public by now.

             Just look at the scenario - when the country is vaccinated by now, there is no question of 4 lakh cases per day or countless fears a day. Vaccine is not at all available in abundance and those who intend to take vaccine are not at all getting it. The example is myself and many like me. We go out on a regular basis and always live with some fear of contracting the virus. We would like to get the inoculation as soon as possible but it is not at all started in the state for our age group. Despite the second and third wave, people like us are still left out. Only 3 crore or 2.3% of population is fully vaccinated till date in the country. This tells that 97 out of 100 are prone to contracting covid-19 today which means the vaccination is a sham and a much is left to be desired. Going by the current rate of vaccination, if it took 4 months to vaccinate 3 crore people it is going to take 14.5 years to fully vaccinate 1.38 billion people. Another 15 years for the country to vaccinate everyone. This is the lethargy I am talking about from the stakeholders.

             Why can’t they approve every successful vaccine candidate in the world to start operations in the country. Why can’t they fast-track the approval process of foreign vaccines to administer in India. Why can’t they waive the vaccine patents and allow everyone to manufacture the vaccine. Why are they heavily dependent on Serum institute(SII) for over an year. Why aren’t many pharma manufacturing facilities across the country be leveraged for making the vaccine. Why are the WHO approved vaccines still not available in the country. Why is the private players not allowed to enter into vaccination for making an aggressive approach. Why is the control, administration, distribution of vaccines still heavily centralised. Why is there an acute shortage in meeting the demand despite making a good start. Why can’t the administrators foresee the shortage and prepare well in advance to keep the supply in abundance.

             These are all some of the questions which needs to be asked for the vaccination debacle in the country. Despite having the medicine from several makers all over the world, we can’t administer in time and save the population from this second wave. The scientists did the job and invented the vaccine in time but the marketing was bad and it failed to reach everyone in time, at least in India. We need to understand that the best vaccine makers do not have an obligation to knock the door on our country but we need to make an effort to knock their door and bring those players. A country of the size of India needs at least 10 vaccine makers working rigorously in order to prevent any future waves.