Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the globe, the world was at war with Covid, fighting an unseen deadly virus that was set to change the meaning of “Normal.”
On 27 January 2020 India recorded the first case of COVID-19 and ever since then, it’s been a journey known to all. We’ve shut down the country on March 21, 2020, as an early measure hoping that we will get out of this soon. Little did we know that his complete lockdown couldn’t stop the toll of positive cases and deaths due to the novel coronavirus.
The lockdown added up to the economic misery India was already floating in. Livelihoods were soon lost, millions of jobs were lost and at stake, and soon, people living on wages were barely surviving.
It is estimated that the national lockdown back in the day cost nearly 41,000 crores per day to the country. Even after tackling every repercussion that came in with the lockdown, cases rose to the sky.
Very soon, the country was opened step-by-step as the lockdown was clearly not helping. People hesitated to help out, but there were families to feed, jobs to make up for, and a normal life that everyone most certainly wanted to go back to.
As people started stepping out, cases rose, but people started to see it as no big deal. That may have lasted as a fever for some, but still, many lost their lives.
When it felt that everything was slowly going back to normal, when we started thinking that the COVID phase, that scared everyone was finally getting over, we were yet to find out what lied ahead.
In the month of April, cases in Delhi started rising very high suddenly, and the news traveled fast. Very soon, the whole country had to forcibly embrace the second wave of the pandemic, only to find out it was more deadlier than the first one.
Scared about the already downfallen economy, the Government of India decided that lockdown cannot be the solution again. It wasn’t very late that the situation went out of hand and we saw a record number of positive cases, deaths in the country, and lockdowns across various states.
Social Media suddenly became a helpline center, children are checking on the wellbeing of their parents, and the prayers to keep the dear ones safe never stopped.
The hunt for plasma, vaccination slots, beds, and oxygen cylinders shows the seriousness of the situation. Amidst all these new variants, change of virus mutation, black and white fungi, and as I write the article, Yellow Fungus come into the news. Did mankind really deserve this?
Well, before we find answers to that question, other important things lie ahead. How do we come out of this misery? How do we save the ones we love?
The only option that’s open to keeping us safe is Vaccination. There may be contrary opinions, other ideas. Ideas like lockdown, social distancing, sanitization which clearly didn’t work out for us.
In a country like India, where a large part of middle-class families depend upon their daily wages and monthly salaries, lockdown is not an option. Social distancing is highly impossible to implement in a way that could stop the deadly virus. Well, I can only see one option behind: Vaccination.
India has been producing, importing vaccines and so far, most of the people who took vaccines are safe which is a good sign. Hence, to come out of this battle zone with a win, we need to get Vaccinated.
With the change in the virus variants or mutation constantly, Vaccines may not be highly efficient in some cases, but that is the best possible option there is in front of us now.
Few people have taken the “Vaccine tour”, commonly to countries like China, Russia as several agencies launched “Vaccine tourism” packages at a minimum cost of 1.3 Lakh. But all of 1.3 billion Indians aren’t luxurious enough to keep up with the costs of these tours. Hence, we need to come up with more logical, easy ways to vaccinate the people of the country.
Today, right now, we aren’t in a situation where we debate who is going to pay for production or is the central government going to pay or the state government.
We are in a place where every second counts for numerous lives that are on the edge. To date, 14% of the population are vaccinated in the country. There’s still a long way to go. But, this needs to start somewhere. The need for mass production, a strong vaccination drive, needs to start as soon as possible.
We cannot emphasize more on the only solution that can get us out of this misery.
Vaccinate, Vaccinate, Vaccinate!