Covid-19 Pandemic: We Must Change Our Food Habits and Lifestyle

*Saumitra Mohan

The world has undergone humongous changes since March 11, 2020 when Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. While the pandemic continues to rage today in its different avatars, its newer strains and mutants are being reported at regular intervals from different corners of the world. The humanity has accordingly been trying to discover suitable modus vivendi and modus operandi to live with this lethal virus.

From the First Wave to the Second Wave and on way to a purportedly incoming Third Wave of Covid pandemic, the world has often found itself at sea trying to find a way to tackle and control an intractable virus which has continuously been mutating. While medical science and health administrators have their shoulders continuously to the wheel to bring about a creditable regime for its surveillance, tracking, testing and treatment, there still remains a lot which needs to be done before the humanity can be said to be safe from this chimeral virus.

Some of us who have been involved and associated with sundry aspects of Covid management since the beginning, we definitely know how we were often at our wits end trying to deal with Covid-19 while very less was known about the disease and its treatment protocols were still evolving. We had learnt words like ‘Quarantine’ only lexicographically or had read about the phenomenon sketchily at different periods of history when humanity was called upon to deal with pestilences like plague and Spanish Flu. However, none of us knew how to actually effect or put the same in place.

‘Quarantine’ was such a reviled and dreaded word in the beginning of Covid that most would shudder to ever think of going inside an established ‘Quarantine Centre’ or even to allow it coming up somewhere in the vicinity of our neighbourhood. People resisting the drive to set up such ‘Quarantine Centres’, ‘Isolation Centres’ or ‘Dedicated Covid Facilities’ ranged from the most unenlightened and uninformed in the slums to the most educated and well-placed people, thinking that setting up of such a facility would somehow jeopardise their life or that of their near and dear ones. Our persuasions mostly succeeded, but fell through in stray cases.

As such, it was a real herculean task to find and convince people to work and serve inside such Covid facilities notwithstanding the promise of provisioning them with all necessary personal protection equipment (PPEs) and higher wages. The Covid protocols for disposal of bio-medical waste (BMWs) have been so rigorous that it was a huge challenge to find ways to dispose the massive BMWs which were being generated or to ensure proper sanitation services in the Covid facilities. Often, they needed to be led by example to convince them to serve the Covid patients in a Covid facility under due precautions.

Same was the experience when the health administrators were grappling with the need to ramp up health infrastructures across the length and breadth of this country. This was no mean task as creating newer hospital beds or CCU/HDU facilities required and involved emergent civil works or procurement of equipment, logistics or hiring of qualified human resources. At the fastest of speed, the facility creation still required some gestation time. But Governments and administrations always found ways to relax rules and norms to expedite such works.

While there were many regular hospitals which were converted into dedicated Covid facilities, there were many greenfield facilities which were set up to provide treatment against a disease which was still unknown and where the suggested line of treatment was still evolving. There was often some resistance from within and without the medical fraternity for converting a regular facility for Covid treatment on one or the other pretext. Still, the spirit of humanity triumphed as predominant majority in every instance was positively forthcoming to go the extra mile for saving and safeguarding the lives of fellow human beings.

While the same was successfully being clinched and put in place, nosocomial services did suffer in some parts of the country in the beginning. This happened because of intrinsic fears of contracting the disease or losing one’s life. Non-Covid health services across the world have been a huge casualty as a consequence of Covid-19 getting disproportionate attention. It is suggested that umpteen non-Covid surgeries have been postponed for fear of an unknown virus.

Studies suggest that a good number of people lost their lives in many countries because of non-availability of timely medical attention while the world has been fixated with Covid management. India as a country has seen unprecedented coordination and cooperation from across the sectors and governmental structures with a dominant section of its medical fraternity and health administrators coming together to provide for the much-needed infrastructures and services at a short notice.

Notwithstanding the financial, logistical and infrastructural constraints, the country saw innovative and creative responses to deal with different aspects of Covid management including transportation, quarantining, testing and treatment of the tens of thousands of migrant workers who returned to different states from across the country. The non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, corporate houses and groups of citizens under suitable guidance from the Government have come forward to put together infrastructures and other requisite logistics including community isolation centres and oxygen parlours by pooling their resources for a better Covid management.

Different e-Governance initiatives, technological interventions, customised call centres for different health-related and telemedicine services have definitely gone a long way in providing the much-needed medical and psychological counselling to the teeming millions who either could not come to the health centres or who were anxious to clarify their Covid-related apprehensions. This not only reduced pressure on our health facilities, but also ensured efficient and optimal use of available human resources.

In fact, the occasional Covid bed scarcity which was experienced in certain parts of the country was often not because of the actual dearth of bed, but because of the unnecessary occupation of hospital beds including CCUs/HDUs due to the morbid fear of the well-heeled asymptomatic and mild patients. Such patients never needed hospitalisation and could have very well stayed home, but ended up occupying hospital beds due to their panic.

The scarcity also arose because some of the vested interests (read vultures who feed and flourish on the dead) started dealing in these beds and were known to indulge in black-marketing such private and public hospital beds. Many such unscrupulous elements have fattened and battened through certain unethical and unholy practices during the pandemic.

The world has also seen unparalleled international cooperation in forging a common response to tackle Covid-19 while there have been countries who have tried to fish in troubled waters to establish their hegemony in the international pecking order. India, on its part, has tried its best to reach out to the weaker members of the Comity of Nations to provide them succour including vaccines and necessary drugs to deal with the virus while also receiving reciprocal assistance from many countries during its time of need. Some critics, however, have panned the Indian approach and questioned the wisdom to share life-saving medical supplies including vaccines when the same were needed at home.

So, by the time the world was faced with the Second Wave of Covid-19 with newer and more contagious variants surfacing, we were relatively better prepared to respond to the virus with many effective vaccines having been discovered to tame the virus. While the pace of vaccination and the quality of Covid-19 response in some parts of the country leave much to be desired, still the disease definitely has brought the best in many of us.

West Bengal, as a state, has been at the vanguard of Covid fight with a much well-placed infrastructure and system for Covid management, thereby having least of dislocations while providing suitable healthcare services to its population. This is despite the occurrence of two super-cyclones in the state since the onset of Covid-19. Those of us who have been at the forefront of Covid management in West Bengal have known how tough, bumpy and roller-coaster has been the ride.

During the First Wave, the Health Department officials in West Bengal, possibly like many other parts of the country, worked for an average of 12-14 hours a day (14-16 hours a day on several occasions) for the first eight months without any kind of leave, weekend or otherwise. And while we just appeared to be past the worst and had started focusing on picking up the tousled skein of non-Covid services, Second Wave of Covid-19 struck with a vengeance.

However, as West Bengal was one of the best Indian provinces in terms of Covid management during the First Wave, the lessons and experiences learnt during the previous surge came handy and we have, under due hand-holding from the Government, ensured that citizens in this part of the country don’t face any problem with respect to Covid treatment or other services without compromising the regular non-Covid services.

While can definitely keep on strengthening and reinforcing our health infrastructures and related services including vaccination, the experience also suggests that the disease has behaved very mysteriously and is still not amenable to complete comprehension of the medical savants and experts. Notwithstanding all the precautions and discretions of complying with the Covid-appropriate behaviour including social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, people continue falling sick or losing life across the world.

There have been many instances of such people contracting Covid and losing life who were at the best of their cautious Covid-appropriate behaviour, who never stepped out of their home but still got infected, who were identified early and provided the best of treatment. While the First Wave saw higher fatality rate, Second Wave fatality has been much less compared to the number of infections though in absolute terms it has claimed many more lives.

While First Wave sickness and deaths were few and far between, Second Wave has brought the pestilence and mortality closer to us, with most of us losing many near and dear ones. In fact, many of them include some big names who lost their lives despite getting best of treatment. This has happened because of the scale of the contagion during the Second Wave. It is here when we feel helpless in front of the forces of nature and mysterious ways of Almighty’s invisible hand.

Still, the pandemic has brought out the best and the worst in human beings since its first outbreak in Wuhan towards the end of 2019. There have been sick and nauseating human behaviour on display during the pandemic. This includes son killing his father for not wearing a mask, neighbours fighting over non-compliance with Covid-appropriate behaviour by some, neighbours forcing the infected neighbours out of community and beyond neighbourhood after the latter contracted the disease, parents abandoning their Covid-infected children or the children abandoning their Covid-infected parents or the relatives refusing to take back their kin even after they recovered from Covid.

Stories of Covid orphans after they lost both their parents or all their relatives or families being devastated after they lost their bread-earning members have generated enough pathos among the Government and the larger society to come up with different ways to extend institutional and societal helping hand for helping them pick up and rebuild their lives. This is definitely the worst of time that the humanity may be undergoing, still it is definitely the time to show our character as to why are we different from other species of Mother Nature. The Homo Sapiens need to prove why it is the best creation of the Almighty.

The nemesis that is Covid-19 and all the human and humane efforts to tackle it notwithstanding, the truth remains that we humans are definitely helpless before nature. No health system or administration could deal with a pandemic when it strikes at such a gargantuan scale. Covid-19 has shown for sure that it is not the dichotomy of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ or availability of better resources, but how good has been the planning and its execution by those at the helm of affairs.

That’s why, many supposedly better-endowed countries have fallen through while the smaller, well-administered countries have fared better. India, for one, has definitely done reasonably better than many other States around the world, given the multifarious constraints it has been faced with. After all, the morbidity and mortality rate of Indians per million have been much less than what has been seen and reported in the First World developed countries.

All said and done, one would also like to submit what has also been pointed out by many others. On a philosophical note, it does appear that God has been adumbrating at the prodigal ways in which humans have been splurging natural resources while also meddling and messing with earth’s climate. It does appear that God has decided to reboot its system to auto-heal the system and bring about a homeostatic balance. So, all the while we were locking down the human activities in our bid to stop the onward march of an unrelenting virus, the nature was seemingly flourishing.

With the downscaled and downgraded human activities, less supplies were needed forcing the factories to be closed down thereby further putting a pause to the exploitation of natural resources including cutting of jungles. With the global per capita income coming down as a result of the pandemic, overall demand also came down and, thus, came down the popular fixation with development. We definitely need to reduce our needs which stress nature and its resources.

One year of Covid has taught us many things including the fact that our day-to-day life could be a lot less complex than we have made it out or that we can very well work from home without compromising the overall productivity or the rediscovery of human relations, tearing our attention away from the artificial world of gadgets and mobile phones or the fact that how artificial were many of our needs as had appeared indispensable during the pre-Covid world.

While we continue to brace ourselves for the Third Wave of Covid or any such thing in future, we also need to pause and think of the advisability and sustainability of measures like ‘lockdowns’ for dealing with such a crisis. Many observers feel that we can’t keep on locking down the system for dealing with future barrage of viruses which will keep happening or we also can’t continue resorting to social distancing as human existence would become meaningless without societal interactions. They recommend the need to find better ways and responses to deal with any such future events including putting in place a stronger system of social security.

As global problems warrant global responses, it is more than warranted that we come together to frame a joint response without being parochially protectionist or self-centred. Our focus should also move away from treatment to prevention of the disease. As such, we definitely need to change our life style and modify our food habits without which we shall remain ever vulnerable to the onslaughts of such viruses in future.

We need to find ingenious ways to repair and rebuild our earth and its ecosystem, while purposely inculcating a healthy and nature-friendly life style. Unless and until we appreciate this, we shall continue to feel helpless against an unseen enemy like Covid-19 virus which will continue mutating and presenting itself in newer forms.