Living with Corona

Part 1

Looks like the our entry into the Post-Covid world is a bit delayed.

All of us have been imagining the Post covid world, but like a mirage, it seems farther and farther as we move towards it. Looks like we have to learn to live with Corona. At least for some time to come.

It's clear by now that after Lock-down 3, we will not be directly entering into the Post-Covid world. Our journey into that magical world is not going to be sudden or easy either. It will be painful and in phases.

In this series of articles I will try to gaze into the cloudy, stormy and pitch dark Covidified skies to see what is in store for us.

Initially when Corona came in, we all had our own set of optimistic excuses to believe that this Corona virus was a very very quickly passing phenomenon.

Some of the (now turned naive) beliefs were

1 - Corona cannot withstand high temperatures, hence it will not survive the Indian heat.

2 - Indians have higher immunity and this will help us buck Corona trend (?).

3 - If left in the open, Corona dies in 24 hours. So the one day Janata Curfew will kill the Corona in isolation.

4 - Corona remains undetected in human body for around 12 days and hence the first Lock-down of 21 days (It became 1st after the announcement of the second one. Other wise we had expected it to be the only one) will kill all the Coronas out in the open all over the country and also help identify the infected persons so that all of them will be detected and treated.

5 - Then there was a research* which suggested that one lock down of 15 days is not enough and we need a single Lock down of over 49 days or multiple Lock-downs of 15 days punctuated by opening in between. Our government preferred the continuous Lock-down of 15 more days and then 15 more days taking the total to 51 days.

Now, despite some stupendous pain and efforts on part of the people and governments, unfortunately, the Corona virus still continues to inhabit and haunt the world. While we have been successful in limiting it to smaller pockets of our country, it hasn't gone. And during its stay in the world till now it has infected millions and killed lakhs, not to mention the incalculable damage to economy, human life in general, people's mental & physical heath.

In India we are already coming towards the end of Lock-down 3 and Corona is very much part of our restricted life, handicapped by rigorous social distancing measures.

Why does it look like the Lock-down 3 is not the end of Corona ?

1 - This virus is super stealthy - It does not express itself in the human body for days together or even weeks together. So without your knowledge it uses the infected person as a carrier. Which means that as of the day of opening the Lock-down 3 (Or 4 maybe) there still may be silent carriers of Corona virus and once Lock-down is lifted they may unknowingly infect those who will come in contact.

2 - The virus seems to be able to survive without a human host longer than previously thought.

3 - Indian cities are super crowded when the working starts.

We can envisage the journey from Pre-Covid to the Post-Covid world into 6 phases as shown in Picture 1 below.

The Pre-Covid phase - Largely the Era before December 2019. So for purposes of approximation, we can call the period prior to the beginning 2020 as the 'Before Covid' Era, the 'BCv Era'. The journey from BCv to ACv may be charted as below -

Phase 1 - The Covid phase Pre Lock-down - There was a mix bag of ignorance, fear and disdain in people before it really landed in many parts of the world and before the Lock-downs started. In this phase, only the infected or those arriving from abroad who were suspected to be carriers of the virus were quarantined.

Phase 2 - The Lock-down phase - Then came the phase when all, the infected and the healthy, were quarantined. This phase has been extending and extending and extending.

Now as said earlier, we are not going directly into the 'After Covid' Era the 'ACv Era', we will only go from Lock-down to Post-Lock-down phase.

After the Lock-down opens, we will still be living in the fear of Corona and its effects. Millions more will get infected and sadly lakhs more may die. This period will be split into 3 phases. In these phases till the true Post Covid world, we will have to "Live with Corona" and "Learn to Live with Corona"

Phase 3 - Post Lock-down, Behavioral control phase - Sadly this will be far from Post Covid phase. We will still have the virus, the infections, the containment zones, the red zones, the green zones, the quarantines and sadly some more deaths. This will be a phase of open movement with rigorous, state enforced, self managed social distancing. This is the time which will decide whether we will go back to Lock-down or we will move forward. A more detailed mapping needs to be done for this phase in subsequent article.

Phase 4 - The Post Lock-down, Treatment supported - Some day or the other, human intellect will find a cure to this virus and even if the vaccine takes longer, some cure may be round the corner. The fear of the virus may substantially go down once some definite cure is found. In this phase, we will be less fearful of the virus since the deaths can substantially go down. Till the vaccine is invented, we may still see the number of infections climbing.

Phase 5 - The Post Lock-down, Vaccine supported phase - Once we have a vaccine on the horizon, the world will heave a sigh of relief. Even though the time required for development of the vaccine is variously quoted to be anything between 2 years to 10 years, we can hope that with entire medical science fraternity and some of the worlds big billions involved in it, the Vaccine may come faster. Lets hope within a year. In this phase, the virus will still be lurching around everywhere but we will be less fearful. The production, distribution and administration of the vaccine to almost 8 billion humans (And some animals?) is not happening in a jiffy. This phase can be expected to last many months, if not years till a majority of humans are vaccinated.

Phase 6 - The Post COVID Phase - The 'ACv Era' (After Covid Era) will truly dawn on us maybe after a year from discovery of the Vaccine.

(In a most accurate way there may never be a truly Covid free world. Like the Flu, Covid may still continue to be part of our life. We may overpower it enough so that it stops being an impediment to our free movement and activity.)

A more detailed gazing of the coming phases is to be done to imagine and understand how the phases will behave (And how we humans will behave in those phases!)

Picture 1 reproduced below for quick reference

Disclaimer -

Due to the fickle minded, persistent, stealthy and sinister nature of the virus Corona, the unruly nature of humans, hitherto elusive discovery of treatments, the long gestation periods of vaccine development and production, large population affected by the virus, the estimates and phases may vary (god forbid) for worse.

Hopefully, due to concerted efforts of entire humanity, advancement of science (and some divine intervention) the phases and their time estimates may vary for the better :)

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*References -

Age structures impact of social distancing on COVID-19 epidemic in India. https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.12055