THE LATEST PANDEMIC

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/03/22/the-latest-pandemic/

The world is not new to pandemics. 165 to 180 AD it witnessed the Antonine Plague, probably smallpox. It killed about 5 million people. The Bubonic Plague in the 14th century killed about 200 million. Over centuries other plagues followed. There was SARS in 2003, and HIV-AIDS which has killed almost 35million persons.

In 1917, the year before the end of the First World War, hospitals and camps in several countries were crowded with injured soldiers and civilian casualties of war. It was said that in France a 100,000 soldiers came in and out of just one of its many hospitals.

That was when a new disease started spreading around the world, as a result of which many people died. It was identified as a strain of the ‘flu said to have started in infected poultry and transmitted to the pigs. Another opinion is that it went from birds to humans, and from there to the pigs.

As a result of the First World War, people moved around more than they would normally have done at the time and they carried infection from one place to another. There were also many injured persons who were more vulnerable to infection. The crowded hospitals and camps provided ideal conditions for the spread of this disease.

The USA was lucky that epidemic was never dubbed the ‘American ‘flu’, even though the 1918 ‘flu is said to have started in the USA, a position supported by several historians. But since it occurred so soon after the end of the First World War, censorship following the war played down its effects in the UK and USA to maintain morale and played up its effects in Spain – which had been hit hard but had not participated in the war.

China in that instance saw the fewest cases of this flu in contrast to the Covid-19 this year.

That ‘flu spread around the world, assuming pandemic proportions in 1918.

It is estimated that as a result of this pandemic anything between 17 to 100 million persons died around the world. At least 12 million people died in British-ruled India, about 5 percent of its population at the time. A large section of the world population today has at least one ancestor who died of the ‘flu at the time.

The situation then was eerily similar to the present when the COVID-19 has immobilized much of the world.

So, the world has been there before, and this situation in which we find ourselves is nothing new. Have we learnt anything from those pandemics?

Almost all those pandemics had a ‘pre-human host’, birds, rats, fleas, pigs, camels, and others, creatures that spread the infection to humans. So you would expect that we would already have better control of food source. Diseases require quarantine facilities, attention to hygiene, and afterwards care both financial and medical. Thousands of years later, none of these things are at a satisfactory level.

Scientists and medical personnel have played their role. Cures have been discovered, and doctors and nurses regularly put themselves in harm’s way. But have governments done their job?

The pandemonium and scramble to deal with COVID-19 testifies to the fact that we are ill equipped to deal with such a crisis which can and does arise at any time, with no warning.

In Pakistan medical facilities are woefully inadequate to deal with routine matters. At this time when we need them most we find ourselves to be short in every sense of the word. What has the government, and more specifically the Ministry of Health, been doing instead of preparing for eventualities which are by no means unusual?

The situation in hospitals in the Punjab would be comical if it weren’t so critically dangerous. There is no protocol in place in case of such an emergency, such as the protocol in place for events such as fires. People have no idea where to get themselves tested from and are shunted from window to department in search of the correct destination. Kits are in short supply, although that is understandable, given that this is a new form of virus.

There are only a handful of ventilators, even though these are urgently required in any form of respiratory illness. There is no concept of quarantine, neither among the staff nor the public, and the state of hygiene is as abysmal as always. The administration and bureaucrats are busy passing the blame to anyone but their own selves.

The situation has been compounded as always by the religious fraternity which has refused to allow mosques to be shut down for the period of this emergency. So although people have been asked to isolate themselves as much as possible (not possible in case of the less affluent segment of society) they congregate every Friday and pass the virus around.

Perhaps the most disgusting of all has been the oath-taking ceremony of the Chief Justice of the High Court on the March 19, which hundreds of invitees attended seated cheek by jowl in the city where Section 144 has been imposed. Clearly the law does not apply equally to all.

But infectious diseases are much less discerning.