 Hello and let's talk about sportspersons in COVID-19. News came today that Mandip Singh has become the sixth hockey player to test positive for the disease. The players all tested positive after returning to the venue of the sports authority of India Camp in Bangalore. The camp begins on August 20th. The players had been in the camp throughout the lockdown and had gone home on breaks before the resumption of the camp. Indian sport like in many other parts of the world has been faced with very tough questions on how to resume action while keeping the players safe. On the one hand, we have seen the IPL thinking about and putting in place very strict protocols. And we've also seen tournaments like the Adria tennis tour, organized by world number one Novak Djokovic, where players contracted the disease. We talked to Leslie Xavier on this issue. Leslie, thank you so much for joining us. So we have seen the news about Indian hockey players and it's definitely not a good sign considering especially the prominence of the sport. And also, what does this really have to say about how sports persons, their schedules are being organized in the context of COVID-19? So ever since the lockdown began, there were many athletes who were confined to the respective training centers or sports authority of India centers or even private centers that way. For instance, some of the wrestlers are put up in India, I mean, Inspire Institute of Sport, which is a private facility outside of Bangalore. And yeah, various size centers, Bangalore, Calcutta, wherever, respective sports are being trained, the national camps that were being held and also athletes who are part of the size and excellence of the junior programs and all that, they were all put up in their camps and there were most of them were convinced to stay back because that's for their best interest because whatever the little bit of training that they would get within the facility, keeping all the safety norms and all the COVID-19 protocols in place, that was being done. But what is happening off late in the last one month or so is discussions around opening up and getting the players to train with a higher intensity, keeping in mind upcoming competitions or keeping in mind getting them back on to the boil as far as competitive fitness is concerned. That's that, different sport have different priorities set or timeline set because when wrestling for instance decided to convene the national camp, the elite wrestlers, all of them said that we are not training yet because understandably it's a combat sport, close contact is involved and you can never be too sure about safety, about your training partner being, I mean, keeping all the norms intact and keeping all the safety precautions in place. So Hockey, this particular case, so six players have been infected at the size center, I mean, let's get to the news part first. So including the captain Manpreet Singh and the one of the four words Manpreet Singh, these two are senior players in the team. And for four others, including the goalkeeper, I'll just name the defender Surinder Kumar, Jessica and Singh, Drait Flickr, Varun Kumar, goalkeeper Krishan Bahadur Parthal and captain Manpreet and Manthi. So 10 players had traveled back from their respective homes after taking a break, they were allowed, they were given permission to visit their families. Again, it's, I mean, there are two ways to look at it also. It's perfectly legit and fine that the players are allowed to visit their families because circumstances are such that they would, how much can a player be confined in respective training centers and be aware, especially in crisis situations such as so permissions would have been granted. But then traveling protocols or safety norms or taking the necessary precautions and all that, it depends from person to person, right? And I mean, there are people whom I know within my friend circle or with my family circle who have traveled back to hometowns and all that and traveled back cleanly that way using PPI kits, PPE kits and all the precautions that are there in place. So I'm not sure whether the players maintain that, but the fact remains that they returned to the size center in Bangalore. They started undergoing the necessary quarantine precautions and then suddenly symptoms started showing up. They were tested the rapid test first, but all of them came out negative. But then again, two players continued showing symptoms. So the PCR test or whatever it's called, the much more definite test was conducted and all of them turned out to be positive. So at present, because the size setup is such that a lot of sport that have been, I mean, athletes have been housed there in Bangalore. And so the hockey team and the members, the women's team are also there in the same facility in a different hostel. So the current players who are the 10 players who they travel together, they have been quarantined in a separate setup there. And observation is there under observation doctors, the in-house doctor is taking care of things, plus the government appointed doctor, plus some doctors from the Manipal Hospital, a private hospital. So Sai is using its resources and ensuring that the players' treatment is, even though they are symptomatic, they have been monitored very closely. So that is the situation right now. It can escalate into things which are bad, which can, which can go bad. Right, Leslie. So I think one of the issues this definitely brings to the fore is the very complicated nature of how to manage sportsperson schedule in a crisis like this. So what has been the global experience? Maybe if you could talk a bit about this. Have there been other situations across the world where such camps are being held, or is this also uniquely an Indian situation? And the nature SAIS? The thing is, one of the first sport to start was football. The professional leagues which started across Europe. And the clubs, their protocols were very clear. You, I mean, all the players were dispersed to start with when the lockdown had begun in their respective countries. And then when the league's date was set, when it's going to restart, then the clubs much in advance, they had convened all the players, kept them under strict control in the premises where the clubs and the club doctors and all everybody had a close, kept a close eye on them. And then it's from there, it was continuous testing processes, training slowly, initially, not in groups, because football being a contact sport again. So initially, three players were training together, then the entire half a squad trained together, then the full squad trained together. And then by the time match dates were coming up, they were ready to play. And again, tournaments, we know we have, we have spoken in previous editions of Let's Talk itself, how eco bubbles have been set up, be it cricket, be it. But on the other side, we had a sort of a very bad occurrence in tennis when Djokovic and that's charity tour. It just created quite a lot of players and support stuff. Because there was no crowd control, a lot of crowd in the stadium, the players themselves were a little lack of safety. So that example is also there. In Indian context, what is happening right now is the establishment is keen to restart training action, things like that. But at the same time, there is no set norm as to how to go about it. Or there is a, I mean, there should also be at the ground level, not just at the ministry level or at the sports activity, decision-making level. They should be, the implementation of the guidelines should be up to the team because the situation demands it. So whether we are ready to have that kind of a thing, we know how things work in India. So it's a little, little, I mean, tricky that way, not everywhere it happens. And Sai Center is a classic example in Bangalore. Last month, one of the chefs, a senior chef there, he was, he had tested positive and he lives outside the center. And when the opening and the resumption of training was discussed, he was calling by the authorities to have a discussion as to how to go about it. And he came in, he met a few officials, then he tested positive. And then suddenly there was a lockdown in the Sai facility just to ensure that there was no problems as I said. And luckily enough, there was no spread, community spread or something on those lines at that instance. But this, the hockey team, players getting infected because how a camp situation works is that these players coming back and all that. Regardless of how the situation is, these players live in rooms which are next to each other, they would come, they would be meeting up, they would be shaking hands or whatever. And they would be eating from the same mess, hall, things like that. So it's very difficult to implement social distancing in a set up. So the paramount thing to do is to ensure that the entire bunch is kept kept in a very closed loop, kept under observation. And so that's the only way to go about it. And so this can be a lesson and hopefully the sports administrators and the authorities realize the seriousness of this. And this can be an example for the immediate future so that things are implemented in a much more stricter fashion. And if at all a player wants to go home and all that, it's a personal call. And once they're gone, getting back, getting them back into the system would require multiple layers of screening and testing and quarantine. Only then they should be allowed into the set up. Otherwise, things could go bad. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Let's give a talk on this. Our next segment is about the atom bomb in Nagasaki. Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb. News Clicks Praveer Purkayasar talks about this bombing and its impact on the history of the world. Praveel, so to begin with, we've talked about this in the last video when we were discussing the bombing in Hiroshima also. This was not really an attack only in Japan. In fact, Japan was not even perhaps the main target. It was more about the Soviet Union considering the victories they had achieved during World War II. And the atom bomb was supposed to be what would be a qualitative difference between the US and the Soviet Union every sense of the term. And what happened, of course, was even within a few years, the Soviet Union developed its own bomb and history was very different after that. So could you talk a bit about that particular period and what might have been if that had not happened, the development of the bomb by the Soviet Union? The supposition we can't really get into, right? But the trajectory was very clear that as number of people have described it, not the one who said it first, is that this was not the end of the Second World War as it is portrayed to be, but it was really the start of the Cold War, that the nuclear bomb effectively starts the Cold War. And it is not as a troublemaker claim. This was in order to avoid people being killed. Millions of Japanese also would have died if they had invaded Japan. So this was the only way to have Japan surrendered quickly. As we know, and this has been known widely, that if the Soviet Union was going to enter the war, the decision had been taken, it had been made public to Japan and their emperor was protected, Japan would have surrendered. They're willing. They had, in fact, asked in number of ways that that's the protection we need. The Japanese emperor should be protected. He should not be put up for trial in a war crime, a tribunal. And if you give that protection that he will be protected, then we will surrender. But it was the United States who refused to do that because they wanted to test the bomb. And to see the sequence, within 20 days of the New Mexico test, they dropped the bomb. So everything was already prepared that you test. If they succeed, you go and drop the bomb. And then, of course, Japan will surrender, they will surrender, as we know. And therefore, the whole history of the world will then start with one nuclear power as against the Soviet Union, which was at that time its competition in the post-war scenario. Obviously, it was good with the competition. And in Europe, the Soviet Union was much more dominant because they had freed Germany from Hitler. They had, in fact, taken Berlin. And as you know, in the Second World War, almost the four-fifths of all the casualties and all the bloodshed that really took place on the Eastern Front and not in the virtually non-existent Western Front for a long time. And then after the landings on D-Day, as it is called, that was really not the major theater of war, even then. So if we leave all of that out, the question that arises, what really prompted the Second Bomb, which was the one which was dropped on Nagasaki? Because the demonstration of the horror of the Hiroshima bomb was already there, and it was only scanned three days after that. It would not have even sunk into the Japanese establishment at that point of time, the extent of the damage and the deaths that had taken place. That it would again drop the Second Bomb. This really made no sense. Even in terms of coming down the Soviet Union, if that was your intention, here it was a technology test. First bomb was an uranium bomb. The second was a plutonium one, and it was thought to be more efficient, more stable, and therefore the United States wanted to test out the technology of the Second Bomb, and it is as heartless as that. You didn't need to test it on human beings. You could have tested it anywhere. So you could have tested it on an uninhabited island. There's a number of people that suggested as a demonstration even to Japan, without dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. To drop the Second Bomb on human beings in order to test the technology sounds completely soulless. But when we come to this, this also is interesting because the fact that the plutonium bomb was designed and dropped, it is also the fact that these are the designs which the Soviet Union actually also received. Soviet Union was, of course, trying to make their own bomb, particularly after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. But I don't know when and how they would have succeeded. The speed at which they were working was they have gotten the bomb the time they did. But there's no question that apart from the Rosenbergs, which we know, there is also Klaus Buchs, who's also a name we know, but they're also in the 90s. We found out there is also Theodor Hoth, who was really a brilliant physicist. He joined the Los Alamos team at the age of 18 and he was involved in the plutonium bomb design and he passed the designs of the plutonium bomb to the Soviets. He was not somebody who was in the Communist Party or in the circuit or was known to the people. He just thought that if the United States is the only possessor of the bomb, this spells a huge threat to the world. The United States would then be willing to use it if they had used it against Japan. They could conceivably use it against the Soviet Union and they would open the doors to something which is so horrific. So Theodor Hoth, not a communist, not somebody who believed ideologically about the Soviet Union, unlike the Rosenbergs did. He was willing to do it in order for him to save humanity from the possibility of its use again and again against the Soviet Union. So he did and this was found out only the 90s when the Soviet Union falls and its archives are taken by the United States. And they decipher through various means that this is the possibly the person. And Theodor Hoth says, yes, I did it and I said, did it because of this. So in fact, there are a lot of things to be said today when you think about the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing that if United States had a 10-year dominance of the world through the nuclear bomb, what would that world have been? There have been writings, I don't know whether they're credible or not, that the US would have bombed the Soviet Union and that was the preparation they were making. But there's no question that the Soviet Union was in Europe concealing a lot more because of the bomb. And they knew that the United States had the bomb and then they also knew it could be used. They didn't know how many, but they knew it could be used. And therefore they really did in that period for the next three years concede a lot more than perhaps they would otherwise act. They didn't want to get post-Second World War. They didn't want to get into a war with the United States, apart from the fact, as we know, they had lost 225 million people. And that was a huge number of people that they had laid down their lives for the Soviet Union. And of course, the industry had been decimated. They were economically in an extremely bad position. Therefore, they were not in a position to think about another war. The United States, its industrial strength was fully there because it had suffered no damage during the war. So therefore, with the nuclear bomb and a completely industrial machine which could produce a lot more than the Soviet Union at that point could. Therefore, the US ability to wage war as well as having nuclear weapons made it a very uneven battle at that point. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with major news from the country. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.