This is the 157th installment of a daily column on coronavirus disease that I began writing on March 19. I started writing it because I thought pompously that there had to be a voice of reason about a disease that was convinced that it would change the world. It is the reason why the HT newsroom began to focus on the disease in early January and has maintained that intensity of coverage; So much so that some of my colleagues have become experts, one in the health aspects, another in the science, not only behind the virus and the vaccine, but also in things like masks and lockdowns, and yet another on the side of epidemiology data. .
Six months after the column, I will settle for a faithful observer: I have been wrong in many things about the pandemic, about the impact of various strange factors on the disease and how we are fighting it, to be the voice of reason.
What started out as a seven-day-a-week column turned into six days a week after a few weeks, then five days a week, and now it’s back to six. I have no idea how long I’ll keep writing the column. This could be the last article, or I can keep writing it until a vaccine is discovered, maybe even until most Indians have been given one. Some fellow columnists and editors have called to comment on my resistance. I am often asked why I keep writing. The simple answer is that I keep writing because the column has become part of my daily routine. And in times like the one we’re going through, it’s what we all need: a routine that keeps us healthy, mentally and physically, and engaged. It is the solidity of the ordinary at a time when the world has been taken over by the extraordinary.
There are those who naively believe that everything will go back to the way it was once a vaccine is discovered and widely available. That is not going to be so. Lives and livelihoods have been lost. People, countries and their economies, as well as institutions and organizations, are going to take at least some time to get back to where they were before the pandemic. And even when they do, it won’t be the same. When analyzing the impact on the economy, health (mental and physical) and many of the social rules and constructions that made up pre-pandemic life, it is clear that none of us, individuals, countries, institutions and organizations, is going to take shape again. like a spring still young. Some will, as will some will break, but most will bend, losing a bit of elasticity (or elasticity, to continue the same metaphor).
That is why a routine is important. Some people may insist that it always was, even before the pandemic, and that it was the difference between the successful and the not so successful. Maybe it was: a thousand self-help books can’t be wrong; not a million people who bought them at airports and highlighted the same ticket (before Indian commercial fiction emerged and ended the self-help book spectacularly). But what is at stake now is completely different. A routine, and all the rules (macro and micro) that compose it, today could well mean the difference between life and death, sanity and insanity, or, to be more prosaic, facing the pandemic well and not facing it well .
In my case, the column and preparing for it (which sometimes means reading scientific articles that mostly always exceed my understanding of science) is a component of my daily routine and one that I enjoy. That’s why I’m at Room 157 today and will probably write Room 158 tomorrow.
Post script: India will break the 5 million cases mark earlier this week.
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