The pandemic era of no good choices

Human beings are the only species considered capable of making a choice based on ‘free will’, i.e. based on reason and rationality. But the pandemic has changed all that. This is an era of no good choices or for that matter, no choices at all.

“This is our first task—caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged” - this is an extract from President Barack Obama's speech delivered after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

We have thoroughly failed in caring for our children and for the young generation during this pandemic. Every choice on what to do about schooling for the kids amid the pandemic is potentially risky or unfair. Keeping the children at home robs them of education and socialisation. It scars their futures, steals their joys. It makes it impossible for their parents to work. But sending them to school endangers their health, their classmates' health and that of their teachers and their families. Aspirants for admission to professional institutions like IITs and medical colleges have no good choice either - appear for the JEE and NEET tests amidst the raging virus or forego admission. If we, as a nation, had successfully done the work of stopping the spread of the virus, as has been done in some other countries, we wouldn’t have to make such hard choices - to pick which poison to expose our kids to.

“The burden of decision making and risk in this pandemic has been fully transitioned from the top-down to the individual,” says Dr Julia Marcus, a Harvard epidemiologist. In USA and many other countries where the virus is raging, governments have left the people to fend for themselves - amidst the health scars, job losses and stifling life spaces. But individuals have control over only a small portion of the fight against pandemic. To track and crush outbreaks are collective functions, requiring competent testing infrastructures, fast contact tracing, universal health care access, thoughtful lockdown and reopening policies, strong public health care facilities, reliable economic support for the displaced, social trust and transparency. Deficiency in any of these prerequisites leaves individuals to navigate virtually alone.

"We have no choice,” said President Donald Trump on March 30, after announcing that federal guidelines on social distancing would remain in force until the end of April. So is the case in India - people had no choice but to face the inherent hardships when a nationwide lockdown was declared at a few hours' notice. Migrant workers had two bitter choices - either to stay homeless and penniless in their workplaces or walk down hundreds of kilometers in scorching heat to reach their native villages.

With the ramshackle and overflowing government hospitals, Coronavirus patients have no good choices - either they pay the astronomical sums being charged by the private hospitals or suffer silently at home in isolation. Tragic choices arise for the critical patients of COVID-19, when the limited resources available cannot be accessed by all of them. Under such circumstances, healthcare rationing is unavoidable and some critical patients are left to die.

Those who have lost their salaried jobs have no good choices either - go back to their native villages and work for the available days under the MGNREGA scheme or toil for the balance days in agricultural fields. If this is not one's cup of tea, they can just loiter around.

We need governments that are effective, empathetic, focused and purposeful, so that people can make some good choices.

(V Venkateswara Rao is a retired corporate professional and a freelance writer)