By Dr Mbuyi Masuwa
HONESTLY, what is going on in India at the moment really seems like a script of a very scary horror movie from Hollywood, the one I don’t think Bollywood would even attempt to produce as they could lighten its gravity by their usual dancing scenes.
There is no room for drama here, the situation is critical. From stories of sons throwing their mother off a bus because she had Covid, to patients being turned away to the mercy of death and the cremations with everlasting flames, everyone who watches these tragic videos from India is moved to shed a tear or two. Those are human beings just like you and I.
The country has been gripped by the neck and is chocking, with many succumbing, numbers breaking their own records. Infections are soaring with over 400, 000 deaths over 3, 000 recorded on a daily basis.
But remember these are just those counted from hospitals, you can imagine how many are not added to the list from those dying at home and the streets.
Those that cremate don’t even have time to eat or change their clothes in days, the heat from the burning bodies is described as constant hell.
India now has over 20 million cases of Covid-19 registered since the start of the pandemic. This is more than the whole population of Zambia and about seven million of those were confirmed over the last month alone.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said India accounted for half of the world’s total Covid-19 new infections recorded in the past week.
And of the 222, 000 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the country, more than 57, 000 have been recorded over the last month. That’s about 80 deaths per hour, and as the government’s toll only includes Covid deaths registered in hospitals, many believe the real toll is far higher. Even the official death rate has continued to climb. Over the last two weeks, the virus has claimed about 120 lives every hour, on average.
HOPELESS SITUATION
“I have lost all hope,” Lily Priyamvada Pant told CBS News at a crematorium in Delhi last Sunday. She had just watched her 40-year-old son’s funeral pyre burn. Her whole family caught the virus, and her husband was still in an intensive care unit, unaware that his eldest son had succumbed to the disease.
“Doctors told me if you tell him, he will not survive,” she said. “He is the CEO of a company and director of many companies… but he could help with nothing.”
The feeling of helplessness is familiar in India’s cities now, and there’s no sign yet that the dizzying infection rate is about to start falling quickly. The sheer number of people suffering with the disease has crippled the country’s health care system, even in its wealthiest mega-cities.
EPIDEMIOLOGIST WARN INDIA’S WORST MIGHT ACTUALLY STILL BE AHEAD
As if the glimpses of burning bodies in the street…as if the number of people being turned away to go die at home… as if all the shortages of Oxygen, medical supply, doctors, nurses etc, as if all these and many more shortcomings are not enough, Epidemiologists warn this might just be the tip of the iceberg with the worst yet to come.
“We are in for a really grim situation for the next two to three months,” epidemiologist and economist Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan is quoted to have told CBS NEWS. He voiced particular concern that the epidemic tearing through India’s cities may not yet have really hit much of rural India.
“With many parts of India still mingling freely without paying attention to Covid norms, we cannot bend the curve by focusing on places that have current increases in cases,” he warned, suggesting stricter measures were needed across the vast country.
THE CREW OF THE TITANIC UNDERRATED THE REAL SIZE
OF THE ICEBERG
On April 14, 1912 after four days of uneventful sailing, the Titanic received sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she kept sailing, the sea was calm under a moonless clear sky.
It is reported that at about 23:30 hours. “a lookout saw an iceberg coming out of a slight haze dead ahead, then rang the warning bell and telephoned the bridge.
The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned sharply – instead of making direct impact, the Titanic seemed to graze along the side of the berg, sprinkling ice fragments on the forward deck.
Sensing no collision, the lookouts were relieved. They had no idea that the iceberg had a jagged underwater spur, which slashed a 300-foot gash in the hull below the ship’s waterline.
By the time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff’s Thomas Andrews, five compartments were already filling with seawater, and the bow of the doomed ship was alarmingly pitched downward, allowing seawater to pour from one bulkhead into the neighboring compartment”. (SOURCE.HISTORY.COM).
ZAMBIA’S ICEBERG TIP COULD JUST BE IN THE HORIZON
The Covid-19 cases in our country are slowly rising: Even 2, 3, 4, 5 new admissions do point to the changing tide and we have been seeing such and even more in the past few days.
I am afraid with our current negative attitude coupled with the upcoming political campaigns, we could slowly be approaching the tip of our Covid-19 iceberg whose real size is yet to be unearthed. It’s up to all of us to help turn the course of this ship.
Please let us wake up and see what is going on. This is not about politics, this is not about who is right or wrong, this is about everyone’s lives being at risk of becoming a tragic victim of Covid-19’s fatal chocking grip.
There are reports that Kenya has detected the Indian Double Mutant, who knows which country would be next and how the variant will ultimately behave in that place… I wonder?
UNTIL THEN ALUTA CONTINUA, THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. PLEASE MASK UP
*OBSERVE HAND HYGINE
*OBSERVE PHYSICAL DISTANCE
*AND BECAUSE YOU CARE, PLEASE KINDLY SHARE.
