Pandemic: Prediction, Prescription & Vit M

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”— Oscar Wilde

- Prabhu Chawla

No. Wilde hasn’t gone wild in the modern context, perish the thought amidst pandemic peril. Not expecting the unexpected is the banal bane of the modern intellect. As COVID-19 cuts a large swathe through 210 countries, infecting over two million people and killing over 150,000, it’s obvious that not only were global scientists, academics, economists and medical experts unable to predict the calamity, they also let humanity down — their fake genius was unable to find a workable prescription. On newspapers and TV channels, cardiologists have turned into virologists, economists talk about mental stress and dermatologists wax eloquent about breathlessness. Even path lab owners have become wise experts on the idiot box, suggesting ways and means to contain the disease.

This cacophony of business, medical and political voices is blotting out the utter failure of the establishment to lay out a health road map to husband the present and midwife a better future. It is perniciously piquant that the number of pandemic predictors is legion. Former US President George W Bush was one. So was Bill Gates. In India, Contagion Cassandras from a ten-year-old yogi to motormouth politicians claimed to have forecast the calamity. But none of these wise heads had a remedy. Why didn’t Gates and his foundation, which dole out dosh in the millions, fund a team to invent a Corona vaccine? Why didn’t other corporate leaders and Harvard educated entrepreneurs pick up the warning from his lectures and lavish largesse on R&D? Above all, why didn’t Bush push his own establishment to flood the labs with greenback in finding solution for an imminent virus attack?