Hello and welcome to The Moving Curve. I’m Rukmini, a data journalist based in Chennai. Twice a week on this mini-cast, I consider one question around the novel coronavirus epidemic in India. Tonight I’m considering this one — if things get much worse in Kerala, will it still have earned its praise?
Nidheesh MK is here on Twitter.
…
My own sense is that the praise was not undeserved, but if the government anticipated a rise in numbers after Kerala opened up — which it should have — then it should have been a bit more circumspect about all the praise it was receiving. Because even if you do open up and allow travel, if your contact tracing, quarantining and health and welfare delivery systems are foolproof, you should still be able to somewhat control or manage the spread, of course within the logic of an epidemic. I still believe that in the long-term, we will find that Kerala handled the pandemic better than anyone else in India. But I also think we need to be a bit more circumspect.
Thank you for listening. This episode was edited by Anand Krishnamoorthi. On the next episode — a new question.
