Hello and welcome to The Moving Curve. I’m Rukmini, a data journalist, and every night on this mini-cast I try to think about one question around the novel coronavirus epidemic in India. Tonight I’m thinking about this: how does this end?
Ed Yong’s piece in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/
Dr. Jayaprakash Muliyil, the former Principal, Christian Medical College, Vellore and a well regarded epidemiologist told Business Standard journalist Somesh Jha in an interview that he believed India should move towards developing herd immunity: https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/we-cannot-run-away-to-the-moon-need-to-develop-herd-immunity-dr-muliyil-120040601232_1.html
I’ve linked to a Lancet article that explains five big reasons that make Covid-19 different from SARS and hence harder to contain: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30129-8/fulltext
That’s the long road we’re looking at right now. On Twitter today, a friend asked: what’s the one thing you most want to do when this is over? And a close friend replied: go to a noise bar with friends. You’re not going to be able to do that for a very long time, I said to him. But there are many more such things I don’t know how we’re going to be able to do for a long time. Restart schools, for instance, where maintaining physical distance and hand hygiene is basically impossible. Have a cricket match in a big stadium. Go to the movies . Restart public transport and try to enforce crowd control.
For many of us, anything beyond April 14 is hard to imagine right now. But we’re going to have to get used to a world in which this virus exists, around us, perhaps for the next two years, and let that sink in a bit.
Thank you for listening. This episode was edited by Anand Krishnamoorthi. Tomorrow — a new question.
