The return of lockdown is a sign of desperation to control a pandemic which is proving a task for all countries. Bangladesh had a weak one almost a year back which basically flopped. People have survived till date because of the nature of the virus and not because of any organized efforts by anyone, public or private to contain the virus.
Bangladesh seems to think it’s a blessed country where normal laws of medical science including virus behavior doesn’t apply. So the earlier lockdown was a failure and the next one looks very much headed that way.
A favourite excuse of failure apologists is that the lockdown fails because the poor can’t afford to lockdown. Lockdowns hurt the urban poor who have limited sources of income and lockdown kills many. But that’s a critique against poor planning not one against lockdown.
When the first wave arrived last year, millions of the urban poor left the city. Both fear of life and panic caused by rumors led to this mass migration. In many ways , it showed that society is capable of coping in their own informal ways better than the formal official part can. The urban poor did what they thought was best for them.
However, as the pandemic progressed, it was obvious that the virus was not behaving in the same way all over the world. While the US and Brazil were registering extremely high deaths, South Asia, wasn’t. It took people some time to recognize that it wasn’t heat, natural immunity and all the other reasons, all unproved that had contributed to the low death rate but the nature of the virus. There were many variants and mutations of the kind in South Asia had evolved to a less killer variety.
Once it became obvious that it was not a killer, most people gave up pre-cautions and ended up leading life as if the virus was not even a threat. Thus masks were discarded, social distancing, rarely maintained stopped and public and social gatherings became popular. Soon the virus had receded from their mind and life had become a normalized.
It’s a fact that infection rates in the urban slums were very high but bed ridden sickness and case fatality was very low. The fiction that the poor were immune due to hard work and a lot of sun was something that everyone including the policy makers seems to have accepted. No doubt it contributes but then the virus would have avoided all the hard working people everywhere who are down now.
With the South African variant becoming the overwhelmingly dominant virus shows the medial side of the logic. Both the Government and the people need to accept this and behave accordingly. The days of denial are over and Bangladesh needs to accept medical facts or God forbid, die in large numbers.
The problem lies in not promoting a scientific culture in the education and social space along with the divine approach. We need both.
