A wiser world after Covid

In October 2008, Viswanathan Anand was playing Vladimir Kramnik in a world title match in Bonn when one of his seconds, Suryasekhar Ganguly, contracted chickenpox.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

Ganguly continued to work, churning out his analysis and connecting to Anand and team members on Skype, while isolating himself in his hotel room, with food and other provisions left at the door.

At the time, Ganguly may well have been the only person doing this anywhere in the world. By October 2020, many millions were doing much the same thing. Four years ago, give or take a few days, India went into lockdown along with most of the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic was civilization-altering. We don't know how many people died directly and indirectly from Covid. Nor do we know how many died, or will die from Long Covid. We never will. Many mortality and excess mortality calculations have been done. But even the most highly indexed healthcare systems don't collect enough reliable, granular data to reduce error factors to meaningful levels, when dealing with millions.

Moreover, even in the most open societies, where the processing and dissemination of inconvenient information is not considered a crime, there are political barriers to admitting high death tolls. Let's just say it's a very large number and this exercise puts earlier estimates of death tolls in wars, plagues, earthquakes, famines, etc., into perspective. The error factors must have been even larger.