The Beginning Of The End Might Well Be Round The Corner!
The pulmonologist at our local hospital, Columbia Asia, Gurgaon, told me that not a single Covid patient had reported either at his OPD desk or the ICU bed today.
And that’s as big a news as you can possibly get at a hospital where hundreds and thousands have been wheeled in since the pandemic started a year ago.
So, is the second surge of the invisible virus in its ’nth avatar, receding with the ebb of time, finally? I ask.
Looks like, the doctor, who has salvaged hundreds from the jaws of death, even as he has let go hundreds of others, told me.
Medics on Prime Time TV, meanwhile, suggest that up to three quarters of India’s 1.4 billion population might have already been infected by now, developing reasonably strong antibodies against the devil’s dare, where a few hundred thousands are now in the company of the eternal lord and master somewhere up there in the sky above.
That makes us the world’s biggest data bank on herd immunised people, right here in India, of whom close to 300 million have sav(i)oured the double delight of having been jabbed so far.
What’s life going to be like? I ask my friend, the doctor. How about the third wave?
My doc tells me he doesn’t quite know ... and can’t really ever tell ... though he cautions that we have to retain the dykes against a future deluge, which means, the mask, the gloves, the sanitiser, the jab and the six feet trench are all must-musts between this ‘n’ that, between then and now.
You can’t go to your midnight fancy dress ball anymore unless you wear the N95 beneath your Venetian opera mask, he cautions.
And you must-must get the jab, no matter what the call of faith for now and never.
But didn’t the last mass migration of the virus just unmask an incompetent government? I ask.
How can a callous citizenry without a ‘cover,’ exposing all family members to the virus in fortnightly cycles, point fingers at those who govern us? my friend the doctor, counters.
When did a state, a government, a political manipulator or a wizard of words ever save an unruly mob from a virus escaping Tiananmen Square?
That’s certainly the pot calling the kettle black.
It’s time to scrub both kettle and pot to get back the shine in our lives. And a good one at that, without doubt.
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