DailyPost 1663
CORONA DOES NOT BARGAIN!
Bismarck said ”Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” That seems to the wisdom of yesteryears, of a different age, time and thought process, learning by your own mistakes itself has become an act of wisdom today. If that were to become the norm, then fight against Corona would have been different from what it is today, in large parts of the world as of now. Whenever we try to forget the lessons of history, the present develops an uncanny knack of forgetting us, even to the level of decimation. Corona does not bargain is one of such lessons of the recent corona ridden world history.
It has been the same way back a century ago when Spanish Flu ripped human existence right through the middle. The world started bargaining a hundred years back with Spanish Flu, after the first wave for its share of fun, frolic, socializing, celebration and excitement. What befell the was the Second Wave, the deadliest of the Spanish Flu.*The Social Media blitzkrieg and WhatsApp university academicians can never understand the intricacies of human existence. We would have done ourselves a favor had we done our homework properly and would have acted like wise men. Posterity will never forgive us for the plight, which we have brought on mankind. Post haste is the only principle which works in crisis. China did pretty well on that count.
The failure of health intelligence was quite intriguing in the first phase and regular bulletins of the WHO also did no good. Wait and watch in the eye of a Tsunami seems to have become the guiding principle of governance the world over. There would be nothing left to watch then. In an unknown territory, only research will help, but research seems to have got limited to collating numbers. To their credit, only worldometer was able to do even that much, commendably throughout the pandemic. Do mathematical models work only for ecommerce? If we don’t use what is available with us, who can we blame?
The approach of revisiting Corona when we are through with everything; birthdays, marriages, festivals, elections, intense political activities, investigations, mass media coverage et al has brought us here. This is the bargaining mindset. Panchayati, middle path, keeping everybody happy have been the golden principles of our existence, not only governance. Corona does not bargain has still not been driven home. Governments are still bargaining for nights, days, weekends, weekdays, number of hours, waiting for elections / byelections, exemptions before deciding their action. Action can happen when the approach is right. Before anything can happen right, we deserve a COVID-19 Appropriate Governance. That would be the beginning of a real turnaround.
BARGAINING WITH CORONA, WE ARE BARGAINED FOR LIFE.