We already have Antivirus for Corona but we are not using it.

Disclaimer: This post is my sincere attempt to analyse the current pandemic situation and how possibly we can overcome this. Please don’t consider it as a view against any organization, govt or political party.

Summary: We are living in an uncertain time. The hardship Corono virus is going to bring is unprecedented. So how do we fight this virus? Well – With an Antivirus. But we don’t have it yet. Or do we have it but we are not using it.

The current pandemic has created enormous uncertainty. This uncertainty has created fear. So the only way to fight this uncertainty is by bringing in certainty. We need to embrace this uncertainty rather than fear it. And it all starts with a simple idea. READ ON.

Try stopping a cart pulled by 130 horses. How much force you need to break the momentum?

How about 1.3 billion people?  Probably you can’t stop them physically. The only possible way is by persuasion. And the best way to persuade someone is to IMPLANT an idea in the mind.

Here is how it was done.

This idea is called LAXMAN REKHA.

Using this metaphor PM did an excellent job to IMPLANT the FEAR in the minds of 1.3 billion people.

Now the wait starts.

The initial idea of this lock-down was that things will be fine in 21 days. Quoting PM – It took 18 days to win the war of MAHABHARATA, so in 21 days we will win the war on CORONA.

Fair enough.

We overworked people never had enough time to spend with family and this was a blessing in disguise. Anyways, employers were also OK to keep paying us during this time. And why not, it was just a matter of 21 days after that thing will start again and we will move back to full pace.

BUT – the only problem is - it didn’t work.

Now this certainty of winning MAHA- CORONA in 21 days suddenly doesn’t look certain.

So, what do we do - We repeat 20 days more otherwise all the possible gains we made in last 21 days will be lost. REASON - The sunk cost effect: It is the tendency for humans to continue investing in something that clearly isn't working. Because it is human nature to want to avoid failure, people will often continue spending time, effort or money to try and fix what isn't working instead of cutting their losses and moving on.

[NOT SURE ABOUT THE GAIN FROM LOCKDOWN – Here is another perspective]

Nobel Prize winning scientist Prof Michael Levitt: lockdown is a “huge mistake”

Now what 15 days more…

Then 15 days more…

Remember SUNK COST EFFECT at work.

So what’s going on here and why we seem to be out of control and out of options. And what can we do about it.

These are uncertain times. We don’t have any set framework to understand the risk and reward. In order to possibly find a solution first we need to re-calibrate ourselves.

It is human to find solution to everyday problem by pattern recognition. We find ourselves in a situation and based on our previous experience we borrow a solution and apply it to the problem.

In this case the problem is we don’t have any historical equivalent. You got it we are not sure.

So FIRST thing FIRST we need to EMBRACE THIS UNCERTAINTY rather than fear it.

We need to IMPLANT this idea in our brains that things are actually better than what we have been made to believe. Look at low death rates 2~3 %.

SECONDLY – We need to break the Inertia we have developed in last 60 days at home.

As per Newton’s law we are in the state of rest and it is going to take big force to bring us back to normal. But this time around we need POSITIVE + FACTFUL messaging.

One example is this tweet from Kiran Shaw:

https://twitter.com/kiranshaw/status/1263875684738330624/photo/1

We need more of it in media and more of fact sharing by government.

We need more of these FACTFUL messaging rather than FEAR MONGERING.

The only way to win over UNCERTAINTY is to bring CERTAINTY.

No matter how bad the numbers are. If data indicates 3% people who have Corono will die – just communicate it. So that we understand that we still have 97% chance of survival.

We need to re-calibrate our MENTAL fear index to make any progress from our state of Inertia.

Mind it, if the government fails to reverse this un-certainty from the minds of people we will not be able to make a comeback and economic result of this will KILL more people than what CORONA will.

THIRDLY – We need to re-calibrate our LOCK-DOWN metrics.

As per current metric a district/ or zone is called a green zone if we don’t find a positive case for last 21 days. Wow! Will it ever work? Look at Goa, it was GREEN and now what it is?

I think, we need to first accept the fact that there are going to be lot of cases. We can try to minimize it by following best practices of wearing a mask, washing our hands and following hygiene.

Once we accept that we need to live with CORONA this is how we can re-calibrate our zones and work more efficiently.

Let me explain it with an example.

Suppose, as of today we have 1000 cases in the city and it growing at 5% per day. At this rate cases will double in 14 days.

Now we know that only about 5% of these infected cases will need intensive care so we need about 50 beds to cater to these patients. Assuming the discharge time is 14 days so in next 14 days roughly we expect another 50 critical care patient.

So it is GREEN zone or RED. As per current norms we are RED.

I think there is a better way to define our zones.

We can simply define zones based on our preparedness of medical infra-structure not on the basis of no of cases.

If in the city we have 1000 critical care beds and we only have 50 critical care patients. So we are just at 5% utilization… hence we should be GREEN.

Once we reach let’s say 40% utilization we can be ORANGE and immediately seek to increase our critical care facility.

If we cross let’s say 60% utilization we can be RED.

By shifting our metric to SOLUTION based metric i.e no of people we can treat rather than PROBLEM based metric i.e. number of people who are infected, we can possibly make much progress.

Your thoughts in the comment please.

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