COVIDmania: Truth of life

COVIDmania and Truth of life
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covidmania-truth-life-bhoj-raj-singh

https://actascientific.com/ASPC/pdf/ASPC-01-0060.pdf

          
 I sometimes think about, why I believe in God? Why there should be a God? Probably, I can't bear the pain of life alone.

Politics of COVID-19 transmission

• Infected people can be contagious well before experiencing symptoms.
• "Some modelling studies suggest 40-60% of spread is from people when they didn’t have symptoms," tweeted Ashish Jha, incoming dean at the Brown School of Public Health.
• Singapore's coronavirus task force also said that it believes half of the country's new COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic based on testing data, Reuters reports.
• Maria Van Kerkhove (@mvankerkhove), Infectious Disease Epidemiologist; COVID-19 Technical Lead, WHO Health Emergencies Programme tweeted on 8-6-20 “transmission from asymptomatic individuals are difficult to conduct, but the available evidence from contact tracing reported by the Member States suggests that asymptomatically-infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms”.

Creation of Panic

           A study in California revealed that there is 0.13% case fatality rate for COVID-19, a little higher than 0.1% for common flu (https://www.vox.com/2020/4/24/21229415/coronavirus-antibody-testing-covid-19-california-survey). But have you ever feared so much from common flu?

          In India, out of 50000 cases of COVID-19, only 1700 died i.e., 3.4% of those cases died and those cases are out of 13 Lakhs tested till date i.e., 0.13% (almost same as predicted in California study). This value is when we tested all dying suspecting that it is COVID-19 only. We also know that most of those died due to COVID-19 were also aged and suffering from other lifelong diseases. That means,  in the general population risk of death is very low.​

Have you ever thought that in India every year 1.5 Crore suffer from Malaria, 5 crores are patients of Filaria   (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5034168/) and every year 10 crores die due to Dengue in the world (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5034168/). Have you ever worried about those poor people? No, because those are big and established pharmaceutical markets but to expand that market further they want to create panic with COVID-19. I have not included here the figures for many more diseases like cancer, diabetes, kidney dysfunctions, cardiovascular disorders haunting not only India but the whole world because they are less preventable or we don't want to prevent those. We know that in the next one-year several pharma companies will be there with COVID-19 vaccine and market will be ready to accept them at any cost, that is Goldmine for them already awaiting. But have you ever thought that how effective will be those vaccines, how will they be used in such a big population? Was vaccination of Polio, Rinderpest and Smallpox a simple one time task. The diseases for which we already have the vaccine and that too providing considerably solid immunity, are they all gone, measles, mumps, tuberculosis, JE and many more in humans, FMD, HS, BQ, Swine fever and anthrax etc. in animals!!!!

            The renowned institutions are creating panic saying that there will be 12.5 to 24 crore patients (they call all infected people patients which is not valid in any case and have never been for any other disease) by August 2020 (https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/covid-19-pandemic-infectious-disease-transmission-sir-seir-icmr-indiasim-agent-based-modelling/; https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/john-hopkins-varsity-disassociates-from-study-on-indias-possible-covid-19-cases/articleshow/74872298.cms?from=mdr). Can’t they tell bigger lies than this? The present data all over the world including India indicates that of the 25 tested only one is positive for COVID-19 infection, i.e., they need to test more than 300 crores to reach this 12.5 crores diagnostic figure predicted by them. Is there any big population in India to be tested? If they test every day 10 lakh people, it will require 3000 days to reach the figure of 300 crore tests, is it possible by any means to do this, even the whole world is not going to touch that mammoth figure by August 2020. If we assume that of 138 crores of Indian 12.5 crores will be sick even then how long it may take to test the whole Indian population at a pace of 10 lakh tests per day, 1380 days, more than three years. Is there can be any big joke than it.

Moreover, Tuberculosis (TB) is curable and preventable but in India alone there are 130,000 TB cases not treatable due to total drug resistance. Tuberculosis also spread through contact, coughs and is a highly contagious zoonosis affecting a large number of animals too. The TB patient keeps on spreading disease for an indefinite time or his or her lifelong. Tuberculosis, a disease of poor and poverty, kills 1.5 million people worldwide and TB is one of the top 10 causes of death and the leading cause of death due to a single infectious agent. In 2018, an estimated 10 million people fell ill with tuberculosis (TB) worldwide including 5.7 million men, 3.2 million women and 1.1 million children (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis). Every year almost 6.4 million new TB cases are recorded. (https://www.who.int/gho/tb/epidemic/cases_deaths/en/). In India, every year 440,000 i.e., 1205 people daily (more than 50 per hour) die due to TB (https://tbfacts.org/tb-statistics-india/), a dangerous zoonotic and communicable contagious disease, but nobody cares and brings India to halt or Lockdown for even a day. Rather, every day millions of TB patients travel across the country, some times on concessional tickets, in public transport in India since ages distributing the disease with dignity and proud but nobody cares. 

In India, every year more than 230,000 people i.e., 630 daily (more than 26 per hour) commit suicide due to one or other reason (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/coronavirus-india-must-do-more-genomic-sequencing-to-enable-faster-decision-making/articleshow/74799884.cms), but no one cared. No one thinks why they die. Among those suicide, more than 75% are young people (future of India). There is no vaccine and no treatment for suicide also. Without being contagious, suicide is one of the biggest killers. Why the WHO and governments fail to prevent it. But we are worried about COCID-19 taking lives of those who have already spent their productive life and now are sick with life itself. We are worried about those who have to die in a year or more due to one other reason but not about those who have to do hard work for the progress of this world.

Again in India, roughly around 17 accident-related deaths occur across India every hour i.e., 150,000 per year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/746887/india-number-of-fatalities-in-road-accidents/) but we never cared, why? Why our roads are more prone to accidents, why are not having good roads, why don’t we have enough cops to make people obey rules.​

Actually, it is all game of big people and the poor are bluffed and bluffed daily.

This is the life and Truth of life.

What should have been a better approach?

I am of the opinion that there should be targeted isolation/ quarantine of those returning from different places (states or countries), and all those who are more vulnerable (aged, suffering from one other disease making them susceptible) to COVID-19. The blanket lock-down is always detrimental and reveals our poor planning and management. It is like punishing a whole village for the sin of a person, or killing a person if his or her finger is cancerous. I love reasoning and planning, not the blanketing approach.

Are we COVID-Warriors or spreaders of COVID?

Dear Experts, please answer,
If we are living and working in a campus having COVID quarantine Centre (where positive cases have already been diagnosed) and testing COVID samples without proper (non-accredited) BSL-3 and in improper BSL-2 laboratories (within a circle of 150-200 yards of our residences and offices), how to enter our details in Arogya Setu app and to what status we belong, Red, Green or Orange? It is the situation in Indian Veterinary Research Institute Izatnagar, an Institute headed by a Virologist. Should we be allowed to roam in public freely or there should be some restrictions?
Guidance is urgently requested so that we may help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in India.