Don’t play Indians! Don’t mess with Coronavirus

Written By: Franca Colozzo

What is happening in India with miles of burned corpses, bonfires on the street baffles me: tears of relatives and bystanders attending public ceremonies for all to see, given the high number of daily deaths and crematory ovens to the limit.

The PM Modi seems to be walking indifferently on the irrepressible pain of millions of Indians, now abandoned to their inauspicious fate. There are no economic resources, the work languishes and Modi pretended ̶ a bit like what happened to PM Bolsonaro in Brazil ̶ that the Coronavirus problem does not exist. Therefore, free access was granted to all activities otherwise economically weak countries could not stem the flood wave.

That the lesson of the coronavirus has passed unnecessarily for some is now clear: it seems that in India as in Brazil and in other areas of the world poverty leads to leave the door open to death since human life counts for less than a bag of potatoes.

For some, the lesson imparted by virtuous China, which hermetically sealed Wuhan, and of Italy itself which ̶ despite the high number of deaths due to initial defaults especially in the most densely inhabited and polluted areas of northern Italy (it seems to have gone unnoticed the problem of pollution in the spread of Coronavirus) ̶ managed to field all the necessary resources at the peak of the spread of the pandemic.

The real problem is how to stop the spread of the virus that, having apparently lost virulence where the epidemic had its peak of course, seems less aggressive but latent.Now it is scientifically proven that with the heat (although strangely this virus has developed in an atypical way even in hot countries such as Saudi Arabia and UAE) the virus should go into a sort of hibernation and resume virulence at the beginning of the autumn season.In fact, it normally develops during late autumn and winter. No one really knows the epidemiological course of this unpredictable enemy. How will it affect it? Will it disappear completely as it arrived or will it regain new vigour and virulence after the summer? A thousand questions crowd the minds of researches and scholars, but one thing is certain that the disease, at least from what emerges from the Italian data, was at times (depending on the cases of their general health conditions) defeated by the cortisone, the same used for the infamous “Spanish fever” that struck the world in the same way around 1918.

Another alleged remedy, contested by some, however, is the use of anti-inflammatory drugs successfully used in a Neapolitan clinic and then spread throughout Italy. If the Italian situation has been emulated (phase 1: total closure in lockdown; phase 2: partial opening; phase 3: resumption of all activities, including tourist activities with the opening of borders), it will mean that the only way to avoid the discussion of the pandemic is social distancing.

Do you see what is happening in India, however young the population is? So open the doors to common sense and emulate what has already happened in Wuhan (China) and in Italy, despite many mistakes inevitably made. An unknown enemy, such as COVID-19, must be fought with all available means, sometimes even empirical, pending a probable next vaccine.

An ongoing stigmatisation policy in India. Unfortunately, it often happens that during the pandemic periods, there is an increase in fear of others and xenophobia. given the human nature, focusing on the negative increases panic and fear becomes a deterrent of rationality. So the Indian nationalists used the fear of the pandemic against Muslim minorities, transformed into scapegoats for an unprecedented health crisis in India.

This stigmatisation has its roots in the unrest that, since 2014 to date in New Delhi, have ridden the wave of hatred against the Muslim minority, which has always been latent in the folds of a nationalist Hinduism.
The population, fomented by talks about “Corona jihad”, accuses Muslims of deliberately causing this contagion. Several articles also mention expulsions of Muslims from their homes by neighbours who accused them of spreading the virus.

The spread of this wave of hatred is being helped by authorities to cover up harsh reality of a poor country, where 90% of the population lives by subterfuge without health care or any kind of welfare. So, to divert attention from the masses of ignorant people, they focus attention on the different, the designated enemy, scapegoat to be thrown into the foreground. Thus the imaginary grease is the Muslim enemy who, in the false vision of Indian wretches, manoeuvred by fascist and nationalist parties, rise to the number one enemy to be killed instead of containing the pandemic through the health indications of researchers, doctors and WHO experts.

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