Piggypanicking

They say, “The fear of something wrong happening is worse than that thing actually happening” and I think this fits perfectly on current scenario of Swine flu. If you switch on the TV and watch any news channel for half an hour it feels as if the end of the world is near and the whole human race will be eliminated by a virus named straight from a James Bond flick as H1N1. It seems that the moment I will take a breath in, I will be infected with this deadly virus. Daily morning my newspaper tells me that another one has died of this disease and the toll count is displayed as cricket match score on the news channels. But is it all worth such a hype and panic lets just stop and think for a moment. This is a disease having symptoms very similar to normal flu, it has a cure and recovery is complete without any side effects if diagnosed early and that too within a week. Then why all panic, because every death caused by it is highlighted on the TV channel in a way that make it seem that doom is near for all. People have been told that it’s an airborne disease, so the best line of defense should be masks right? Wrong, even WHO have issued guidelines on usage of mask. They create more problems then solutions. And to top it all our health minister comes on TV and says we need not to panic.

People have taken strong objection of minister’s remark that there is nothing to panic, may I ask what is Mr. minister suppose to tell the Indian population who is already panicked? He is trying to put some sense of confidence in the disturbed souls by saying that they are dealing with it on top priority and I agree with him because that’s the best he can do given the history and culture of our country. We have never been a country with good health care system, our government hospitals suck and everyone knows that. We are not known for being the hygienic lot and same can be confirmed by the way we dispose off our waste. Recently I happened to witness a “Jagrata” which is nothing but a ritual in which people do a night out singing bhajans mostly based on film tunes, so a person who is not able to hear the lyrics due to the cacophony caused by the loudspeakers can happily assume it to be a bollywood night. Next day morning Prasad was offered to god and distributed among the followers, what followed was a huge dump of used paper plates, glasses etc. left on the side of the road so that the wind could tell the whole city that someone believes in god and have spent night singing bhajans. So considering the kind of behavior we show on such pious occasion, nothing less is expected in the state of panic so following the same we have put all the used masks on the roads so that people should see them and be aware that mask is a way of defense against swine flu, we have a very simple rule “Dustbin starts, where my home ends”.

We should not panic because swine flu has reached India, but we should panic because we know we are not ready to deal with it, although it’s not deadly but it requires to be treated on time. We have not enough testing centers, not enough medicines stored, not enough awareness on preventive measures because we are firm believers of reactive mechanism. Yesterday only, one of the CM had a “stock taking meeting”, don’t you think she should have taken the stock of the situation when this disease started in other countries 3 months back knowing that in this age of globalization no one and nothing is far and by now a machinery should be in place to deal with the so many cases of H1N1, but we will not dig a well till the house is on fire and for that also we will not have the equipment ready, I read somewhere that one of the Indian state has a one page disaster plan, on the top of the page its written “In case of disaster call army”. We have always been bad at disaster management, but let’s not make it worse by spreading panic about a disease which is deadly but completely curable. Wash your hands regularly and pray to god that no one infects you unknowingly…that’s the best you can do.