The second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping through India,
causing untold suffering to the people makes one to wonder what this pandemic is
after all. Is it a once in a century event? Or is it new, peculiar only to our
21st century? What do we do when it strikes us? How do we manage it?
These questions and more drove me to read some material on it, especially two
books, “The Age of Pandemics 1817-1920” by Chinmay Tumbe and “The Great
Influenza,” by John Barry. Both the books touch another horrible pandemic that
swept the globe much like our present pandemic, popularly known as “Spanish flu,”
though it had nothing to do with Spain.
So what is a pandemic? When a disease, say for example,
malaria suddenly affects many members of a community at the same time, it is
called an epidemic. When that happens
periodically and is localized it is considered endemic to that region. But when such an epidemic spreads across a
wide geographical area, involving countries and continents, it becomes a pandemic. In north India it is called mahamaari, maari commonly referring to
an epidemic; maha being big one.
In the ancient world and the middle ages, there had been at least
two great outbreaks of pandemics. The plague! It ravaged at least some parts of
the world once in 6th century and again in the 14th
century. The first plague pandemic occurred during the reign of Justinian 1,
the Roman Emperor of Byzantine around 540-550 AD. It originated in Egypt and
spread through Alexandria to Palestine and to Constantinople, Byzantium. Then
it travelled to Italy, Spain and up to British Isles. It was transmitted
through rats-rat flea-human beings via flea bites. Only in 1894 it was
discovered that plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. People
died literally like fleas, thousands of people dying on a single day. This
depopulation and economic devastation so weakened the Empire it was not able to
stand up to Persian invasion that followed soon. The pandemic is learnt to have
killed around 10 percent of the world population, the figures being higher in
Europe to around 25 to 50 percent even. Its impact on Asia was marginal.
The second plague returned with a vengeance in the fourteenth
century, between 1346 and 1353 AD and it devastated whole populations in
Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, popularly known as the “Black Death.”
Again mortality rates were high in Europe, where whole population was wiped
off. It originated in Crimea in 1346 and reached Constantinople, then via
Mediterranean reached Spain, France, British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia. It
came in waves, and reached Russia in 1353. It is said to have killed up to 50
million people, with 35 to 60 % in Europe and the Mediterranean world and 10 to
20 % of the world population that time. Though Europe was devastated, the
healthy population soon rose and Renaissance, Protestant Reformation as well as
anti-Semitism, all followed soon and sanitation improved in those countries.
Small Pox was introduced into the New World
from Europe, the Americas after 1492, decimating the local populations like
Incas, Mexicans and native Americans. Edward Jenner perfected the smallpox
vaccine in 1790s and the disease was controlled and finally eradicated from the
world. It is of interest to know that Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V died of
smallpox! Cholera outbreak, a
water-borne disease, started from 1817, having originated from India and moved
over to the other parts of the world, Western Europe, Americas, Russia and
Egypt. Charles Dickens’s son died out of this plague around 1850s in London. Around
20 million people died worldwide by 1920. Discovery of ORT-Oral Dehydration
Therapy brought down its severity. Improved sanitation and availability of pure
and uncontaminated drinking water reduced the mortality considerably. An influenza plague started in China in
1894 arrived in Bombay in 1896 via ships and killed almost 13 million people in
the world, 12 million in India alone, which tapered off around 1920.
In 1918 the world saw influenza
pandemic that was much more global than the above pandemics. It lasted only for
2 years but wiped out over 40 million people. In India alone 20 million people
died of this flu pandemic. Over 2% of world’s population was wiped off. It was
the deadliest of all the pandemics so far. It originated in Kansas, American
Midwest in 1918 and coincided with the movements of large number of soldiers
recruited to fight in the World War I, which America joined towards the end.
From the soldiers in the cantonment area it passed on to the civilian
population. In contrast to today’s Corona virus flu the American flu killed
adults aged between 20 and 40, but very young and the elderly were not touched.
Within two months it will finish off in one American city and then move on to
the next. From May 1918 to October 1919, it killed some 8,00,000 people in
America.
Spreading outward, it killed 2 million people in Iran; spread
to India, Kenya, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Philippians, Russia,
Portugal, and Spain. Though death rate was not high in Spain, because it was a
neutral country during the WW I and without censorship, press openly wrote
about it that it got the name Spanish flu. In India it affected mostly the
rural areas where not much medical facility was available. It killed Maharaja
of Bagelkhand, Venkat Raman Singh. A severe drought in 1918 had already left
the people of India malnourished and the flu caused great suffering and death
among them. In Europe the flu claimed the life of German sociologist Max Webber
in 1920 in Munich. Crown prince of Siam died of flu in June 1920. Another
notable person to die of flu was Frederick Trump, paternal grandfather of
Ex-President of America, Trump. The then President of America Woodrow Wilson
contracted the flu in April 1920 in Paris in the midst of negotiating peace
terms at the end of WW I. He was paralyzed later and died in 1930.
The 1918 flu affected the upper respiratory tract of the
lungs, killing a person within 4-5 days, sometimes within a day; it spread
through the population like fire; hospitals had no adequate beds to accommodate
the sick; doctors and nurses who served the patients started to die; drugs were
in short supply; the dead were piled up in the morgues and corridors of the
hospitals; then in the houses, as there was no other place to store them;
trucks picked the bodies and as even digging individual burial places became a
strain, the bodies were buried in mass graves. As importance was given to the
war, the news about the flu pandemic was suppressed and not given out. During
this flu pandemic, scientists thought that a bacterium caused the influenza.
But decades later it will be learnt that it was caused by a virus and it was
separated only in 1930. Thereafter the scientists were able to develop a
vaccine by 1945 to counter the virus. It took years, almost two decades and more
to develop the vaccine.
Hundred years later we encountered another viral influenza
pandemic. Covid-19, the China flu, which originated in Wuhan in China, was a
repeat of the 1918 flu. On 30th December 2019 a young doctor in
Wuhan Dr. Li Wenliang warned about the serious nature of this flu which
resembled SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). He was silenced by the
authorities and he died as a victim of the same disease on 7 February
2020. WHO named the flu as COVID-19, or corona virus disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.
On 11 March 2020 WHO termed it as a pandemic. By that time it was too late and
it had spread all over the world. The rest is history. Though in China itself
it was stamped out by rigorous quarantine and lockdowns, in the West it
ravaged. This was only the first wave. This time it affected mainly the elderly
and not the youth or the young children. Then by October/December, 2020 it came
as the second wave in Europe, America and England, more virulent than the first
wave. The virus has mutated and had become more virulent strains in UK, South
Africa and Brazil and continued to spread.
The first wave came to India by March 2020 and in the start
itself the government unnecessarily shut the whole country in lockdown for 21
days, ruining the economy and making millions of migrant workers from the less
developed states like Bihar and Utter Pradesh jobless and homeless; thousands started
to walk home 1000s of kilometres away, as the lockdown was sudden with no
arrangements for them to return home. Many died on the way. Economy shrank by
23%. The second wave came to India by February middle via England and caught us
napping. By April it has caused havoc among Indians, especially in Maharashtra,
Delhi, and UP and Karnataka in the south. The leaders of the country prematurely
congratulated themselves that India has overcome the virus, and went ahead with
election rallies and Kumbmela, when
the virus incubated and burst the seams April 20th onwards. As the
government lulled the people into believing that the worst was over, people
also relaxed without using mask and congregating for all sorts of purposes. The
political leaders and officials relaxed and made no effort to improve the
health infrastructure to face the onslaught when it would come. And today
people are dying without oxygen, without drugs and even without hospital beds
for the sick. Though a vaccine has been invented and India has the capacity to
produce large quantities of this vaccine, being the so-called ‘factory of the
world’ in pharmaceuticals, the country is facing shortage of vaccines to
vaccinate her people. She was not prepared to face the emergency.
The second wave in India was really a man-made disaster. It
could have been handled efficiently if only the leaders had some humility and
forethought. Had they cared about the people and not so much of winning the
elections and pandering to the religious sentiments of some of the communities,
it would not have boiled up to this state now.
When this pandemic hit the world, people had no memory of the
1918 flu pandemic. Science had not developed much then. So they struggled.
People died. But in the 21st century with the development of science
and technology we need not have suffered so much. Vaccine was developed within
a year; it took more than 25 years to develop the vaccine for the Spanish flu.
The death rate and the absolute numbers are much less compared to the Spanish
flu; still it could have been managed better if only the political leaders led
their countries in the right path. That was not to be.
Why does the Lord permit such pandemics at all? Is it to
remind humankind of our own limitations and instil in us humility and fear of
God? Many had returned to the Lord during this pandemic confessing their sins,
due to fear of death and fear of going to hell. Or is it that the end of the world
– apocalyptic way of interpreting such events? But this is not the first time a
pandemic has come, nor will it be the last time. It came in 5th
century, then in 14th century, then in 19th and 20th
centuries; now again in 21st century. How do we face such emergent situations?
The fear of God induced by a pandemic, won’t it disappear once the pandemic goes
away? Then what is the point? Isn’t it like a sizzling cracker without fire!
We need to be god-fearing in our everyday life and lead a life
as if, either our Lord Jesus Christ is returning to earth immediately or we may
die before that. Either way we need to live as if it is tomorrow. Then we will be
prepared when the actual ending of the world as per the time designated by God the
Father happens. Till such time let’s live in the joy of the Lord, being confident
that He is still on the throne.