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To stop eating to avoid being poisoned is a path to suicide. Lockdowns have the same effect, not just on the economy but on its very ingredients: livelihoods and lives. With vaccination underway, there are three major impediments to keeping lives and livelihoods safe — one, shutting down, or severely restricting, means of earning; two, creating a lag between those vaccinated and those yet to be jabbed, the latter running a higher risk of spreading the virus; and three, non-implementation of the two safety measures of mask-wearing and physical distancing.
The direct effects of lockdowns are devastating — income losses, businesses grinding to a stop or slowing down calamitously. Lockdown is throttling by policy. On the vaccination count, India simply has to crank up production and delivery. As Narayana Health chairman Dr Devi Shetty insists in a ToI article, vaccinations must include 20-45-year-olds too — not because they are at high risk, but because they pose the highest risk as ‘super-spreaders’.
For this, vaccine production has to be super-scaled up. As argued in this column before, GoI should buy out Covaxin’s intellectual property rights (IPR) from Bharat Biotech and allow companies with manufacturing prowess to produce the licensed product in large quantities. But it is public disregard for precautions that undermines all precautions.
Whether it’s political rallies, protest gatherings, celebrations or the health ministry’s worry, the upcoming Kumbh Mela, mask and distancing are being thrown to the wind. Penalties for non-implementation must be strict — not wearing masks or congregating in big gatherings must ‘hurt’ far more than fretting over mask-wearing or staying away from crowds.
Measures like night or weekend curfews are not just an eyewash but literally ‘crowd in’ earlier hours and weekdays. Keeping workplaces open with precautions, ramping up vaccinations, and stepping out with masks and keeping ‘do gaz doori’ feed off each other. If one goes for a toss, the risk of everything crumbling is very real.
Courtesy - The Economic Times.
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