 Hello and welcome to NewsClick for another edition of our discussions on COVID-19. There is no question that COVID-19 is not going away. In fact, those who have been talking about herd immunity and such scenarios, they seem to forget that herd immunity has been achieved only when we have had a vaccine. Otherwise, against no infectious disease has herd immunity really worked. And the same scenario we see here today, we can talk about Sweden and so on. But let's look at the countries which have been affected. And we have daily figures that the, for instance, the Worldometer site provides and various other sites provide. If you see that, you will see those countries who are in the top of the numbers earlier. For instance, you have had US, India, France, Italy, UK, Germany, they're again still at the top. So therefore, if we think that herd immunity at least in countries like France, Italy, they should have given us some, given them, Italians, the French people some protection, it hasn't worked. And in fact, the details of it are very clear that it is the number of people who are affected in certain parts of these countries. The same places are affected by the disease, by the epidemic again. So clearly, it is not that the herd immunity has been reached in these places. But if infections still stayed, people who are infected in these places still. And again, under certain conditions, maybe lifting of the lockdowns, normalcy being considered to be restored, that again, it has spread in India, it's very clear. Delhi is in the third phase. This is the third crest that we are seeing. We had one wave earlier, we have a second surge and Delhi is now seeing a third surge. And if we take all of these surges into account, the point is that they have taken place in different parts of the city, maybe, but the same city has been affected again, again and again. So if we think that herd immunity will actually protect the people, after some time, that rate of protection would demand 60 to 70% of the people be infected. And we are nowhere near reaching those figures in any part of the world, including the United States, which has the highest rate, highest numbers as of date, and is also breaking all records that are going 100,000 per day, more than 100,000 per day. In India's figures at the moment have receded from the 90,000 at its peak to about 40, 45,000 right now. But none of these figures should be taken at phase value. All it means is that the nonlinear nature of the epidemic, that it goes from one place to another, one locality to another. And as one of the epidemiologists in the country have described it, it's really hundreds of epidemics which we are seeing. We are total them as one epidemic when it comes to countries figures, but there really are a number of epidemics which are taking place simultaneously. And that's why herd immunity means 60 to 70% people, and that is not being achieved in any part of the country as yet, if it ever will. And we'll come to that. Why am I saying that? The second part of it, we have hard data, seropositivity data, which looks at how many people have antibodies, what fraction of the people have antibodies. And if you say Indian figures, it's about 15, 16% in say a city like Delhi. If we take other parts, it's not very different in different parts of the world. If we take specific localities, it of course differs. Darabi has something like 60% herd, 60% seropositivity. That means people have antibodies in them, and therefore they are unlikely to fall in again. 60% may not have antibodies, but because 60% people have the number of infections have come down dramatically over there. But in other parts of the city, they're there. And what we discussed with Professor Ratna the other day, he described to us, for instance, seropositivity figures in Pune that you have Jungijopic clusters which have high seropositivity, that means infections are high. We expect it because it's a densely populated center, the shared bathrooms, and also the fact that they have much less space per person. Therefore, obviously the infection rate is higher. Just opposite that or close to that, you have apartment buildings where the rates are lower. That also means that those buildings could also get affected tomorrow, which they need are. And that's why you have this surge one after another in Delhi, Pune, in other places. Coming back to the other issue of what is called the herd immunity issue, and I see articles now coming up in different places. The herd immunity article is also presented as if if we have an infection of COVID-19, then that is it. We SARS-CoV-2 has infected us, we'll have antibodies in the rest of our life, we know that's not true. We know that at the moment we do not know how long the antibodies will last, but we have also had cases of multiple infections that is small. Nevertheless, we had cases of a second time COVID-19 infection. That is something we also need to take into account. How long will this infect antibodies last? How long will they protect us? We know in the case of flu, every year we need flu shots and even then there are about 50, 60, 70% effective depending on the year. But in this particular case, if we get the vaccine, how effective it will be, at least initially we don't know how long the vaccine effect will stay. Six months, one year, three months we do not know. These are all unknowns at the moment. So to talk about herd immunity and let everything else go, in fact, is basically either fatalism, that means, okay, we can't do anything about it, let it go. Whatever happens happens or it is basically saying that survival of the fittest and they will take the hindmost. This is the only perspective with which you can talk about herd immunity as a principle because we know there is no herd immunity. That is, that's likely to be achieved. And all those who are talking about herd immunity essentially are arguing for going back to quote unquote, normalcy, lifting all the restriction that exists and hoping that let it rip through the population, but at least the economy will be restored, that it will get normal economic life back again. But the point is we have seen time and again irrespective of what the government policies may be. People are not going out in large numbers. They still maintain their distances. They're still taking precautions and therefore a normal restoration of the economy will not take place unless people are able to do. The governments are able to do or countries are able to do, but China has done. Not only China, it's also been done by Vietnam. It's also been done by Francis Taiwan. So there are other places in the world who have actually crushed the disease, crushed the epidemic completely and they have gone back to normalcy and there is a restriction of economic life there. But look at what they do. For instance, in the fine, like the Kashgar, which is actually a part of what is the Uyghur campaign, which keeps on talking about how China has created this Uyghur concentration camps without with very little data. But living that out in Kashgar, for instance, when some cases were detected, they tested the whole city and then they decide they found that about 140 odd cases were there. They also crushed the pandemic in Kashgar. Similarly, any place, Wuhan, they were having multiple cases coming up in the city at odd times, odd places were showing people having symptoms or showing positive COVID-19 cases. What they did is at one point they tested the entire city. They took three days, tested 10 million people and found about 150, 160 people and that's how they crushed the epidemic. Now that kind of approach, crushed the epidemic in order to restore the economy will work. But if we think a mixture of laissez-faire, let it rip, let the people be infected, then we are not understanding the reality. People are taking precautions, people are being careful and that's why this policy will not work if the epidemic continues and the epidemic is continuing in various countries as we have noted. Some countries know most countries in various forms, but certainly in countries which have been affected earlier, we are again seeing surges coming back. That means it's very much there. It's basically the nature of the epidemic that it have access and veins in certain parts and comes back again. The last point I would like to make that let's recognize the public health issue and what are the public health implications? People will die. That means COVID-19 has already become the biggest killer in the United States. It's not the biggest killer in India partly because of demography shows by much younger population. Death rates are therefore relatively less plus the COVID-19 cases as they have occurred. Also, the health system has better understanding of how to treat serious patients. Therefore, the death rates all over the world in COVID-19 have fallen from the initial phase. But having said that, what do we see in Delhi today? For instance, already there are hospitals are chocolate lock full, the COVID wards are getting full. The basic requirement that you have of oxygen and ventilators if there are serious cases, those beds are now becoming to be completely full. So this is the issue that if you want to face it as a public health disaster, public health issue, you have to prepare your hospital system to take care of the peaks and you have to manage those peaks. That unfortunately is a public health issue, which we at the moment do not see how governments are facing up to this. And certainly in India, we have, in spite of the fact that we have had warnings, we know the peaks can come, the Delhi peak is probably maybe it can grow up to 10,000 from 7,000 odd it is now seeing. Are we prepared for that? That is the preparation we need to have and not just talk about so called mythical herd immunity. So these are some of the issues we need to take because the vaccine is still going to be at least another six months away. Let's face it, that we are not going to see the active vaccine campaigns all over the country, reaching at least 20, 25% of the people for another six months to nine months, whatever the government may say. Unfortunately, the government has taken a completely political approach to the COVID-19 issue, first making a lot of song and dance about lockdown, being able to crush the epidemic. Then saying we are now talking about avoiding deaths, that we have avoided so many deaths, therefore it's a victory. Now saying this epidemic is going to go away by February. We know that the predictions of the DST Supermodel was that by February, not only with the Indian numbers fall or almost disappear, but also Delhi would start falling after the second search that we have seen predicted that Delhi is now going to only fall. What do we see? Delhi has actually seen a third peak, bigger peak than what were the earlier two peaks. It had predicted the DST Supermodel, not talking about something which is non-government. This is the government model. Government has put its intramatur on it by calling it the DST Supermodel. That model said that Delhi's figures are probably such that not only Delhi's figures in fact said all over India, the figures are such that we have reached 30% of positivity in the country, which means that Delhi had much higher number of infections that this is figures would be even higher. What do we see? No, this is not true. Obviously the center positivity levels are what the figures which ICMR surveys are releasing are that it's really 14-15% not 30%. I would also like to advise all those who are talking about the so-called herd immunity and so on, they're forgetting one thing. Okay, people are not dying in the numbers that they were dying earlier. That's true, because as I said, democracy is such that we have a much younger democracy, the older people are affected more. But there is another issue to this, that even the younger people, there is something called long COVID. That means 10 to 15% of the people take a long time to recover. It affects different organs of the body. This is not a disease. This is not something that we have to take it as if it is just for them, a five-day, four-day, six-day issue, and then it goes away. Yes, for 85% of the people, that would be true. But 15% it is something which is a large number considering the number of people we are seeing and therefore we should not forget this number. This is something which we have to take into cognizance that there are cases of long COVID which are not small, which are significant in number, and those people are going to pay very heavy price if we do not repeat, if we do not try and control the disease. Right now the government seems to have given up. The people have developed a fatalistic approach and therefore we have a failure on a large scale from the public health system and therefore we are getting the DSD supermodel talking about how everything is hunky-dory, everything is what we find, where it is not. We start seeing talks about herd immunity and I think both of these are underestimating the seriousness of the problem that we still have and this is something we need to understand. The public health crisis is there, COVID-19 is a public health crisis and we have to still tackle public health crisis through public health systems that we have, that needs to be strengthened, that needs to be the government focus, not politicizing the epidemic and talking about something else. This is all the time we have for Newscreen today. Do keep watching Newscreen and do visit our website.