Chaos (calamity ?) Of Govt’s Making and What Now?

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Whether PM delayed the lockdown for politics in MP or not is now a small point. The humungous error it did was in not preparing. It did not prepare itself and its agencies neither did it prepare its and populace in general for getting into and staying in lockdown. So PM has become like Abhimanyu of Mahabhrat who bravely went in but did not know how to come out. But there is big difference. Abhimanyu had gone alone, here our PM has taken the whole nation along and now nobody knows hot to get out.
From 30th Jan, when first Covid19 patient was detected it took India 50 days to reach testing of 1000 per day in the population of 135 Cr. We went into lockdown with only handful of Covid19 labs in the area of 33 lakh sq. km. Even after that increase in capacity has been slow. So the nation doesn’t really know where she stands. The day there happens more tests we have large number of daily positives and the day there are fewer tests we have fewer new patients. (see first image - charts of daily numbers). 

Had we been testing adequately then as testing increases exponentially, the proportion of positives detected should have gone down. But instead ratio of positives detected to tests carried out any day has been stable between 4 to 6% since 19th March, since when the data is available (see second image). 

So if tomorrow we do 8 lakh instead of 80000 then there is ground to fear that we will detect 40000 positives instead of today’s 4000. So there is extreme urgency to ramp up testing so that in a short while we will reach a stage where we test 8 lakh in a day and yet find only 4000 or 400 positives, so that eventually we dont need to test so much and we would need only focused testing. 

S, Korea, Australia and New Zealand have achieved this. Australia even has claimed to have eliminated Covid19 (not eradicated).  Lets start with S. Korea as it has population density similar to India (actually more than India) and that more than 88% of positives have recovered there. (see the spreadsheet in the third image). 

So we get a good stable data. S. Korea is close to China and very intense connected with China and the western world. So the kind of control they have got over the epidemic, so early is very exemplary. They started high testing very early February, (see chart in fourth image),  

supported by checks at airports, lockdown, drive-in testing (anybody can go and get tested), quick segregation of positive patients before they pass on to many others. Due to these they could arrest early rise in cases there. So now they are abe to reduce testing and are looking to gradually ease restrictions with keeping infection in control. NZ and Australia started late but raised their testing with super fast speed (see chart in image five) 

so that to cover most of infected and probables in population. They too have managed to get spread in control. Compare these with India’s late start and extremely low level of density and you will understand why, we are in eighth week of nationwide lockdown with path forward in sight. 

Indian government has not been much supportive of her poor people but even if it was very supportive it could not continue this support indefinitely. Lockdown sure needs to loosen gradually. But before that we need to super urgently increase our testing ten folds, twenty folds. Then and only then can we detect most of the patients and isolate them and look to contain the spread. I don’t think there is any other way.

(Views, counter views on these as also if nay errors noticed in what I have written, you are welcome to share)

कोंबडी आधी की अंडं आधी

काल मावळलेला सूर्य सकाळी उगवलाय.  संध्याकाळी पुन्हा मावळणार आहे नव्याने उगवायला. सूर्यदर्शन घेऊन मी छाती भरून घेतलीय ती मी रिकामी करणार आहे पुन्हा भरून घ्यायला. संध्याकाळ-सकाळ-संध्याकाळ सतत चालू. काय आधी नी काय नंतर, काय नंतर नी आधी  काय.  उन्हाळा-पावसाळा-हिवाळा-उन्हाळा ऋतुचक्र सतत चालू.  दिवस रोज़ उगवतो पण ‘हर शाम की सुबह नई’. तेच ते तेच ते ,तरीपण नवीन ते. सुरुवात होते, नी संपते तीही सरुवातीच्या जागी येऊनंच. प्रत्येक शेवट हा नव्या सुरुवातीचा गर्भ असतो, प्रत्येक सुरुवात ही एका शेवटाची दवंडी असते. खरंतर आरंभ आणि शेवट हे आपण आपल्या समजूतीसाठी वापरलेले शब्द. नाहीतर कसली सुरुवात नी कसला शेवट. चंद्र पृथ्वीभोवती फिरतो, पृथ्वी सूर्याभोवती, तसंच इतर ग्रहांचं आणि त्यांच्या चंद्रांचं, मग ही आपली सूर्यमाला मोठ्या सूर्याभोवती फिरते,  अशा अनेक सूर्यमाला आकाशगंगेभोवती, एक आकाशगंगा दुस-या आकाशगंगेभोवती, अशा अनेक आकाशगंगा तिस-या आकाशगंगेभोवती, काही एकमेकांभोवती. पण फिरणं सतत चालू. कोणीही स्थिर नाही, काहीही स्थिर नाही. वर गेलंय ते खाली येणार, खाली आलंय ते वर जाणार. जवळ आहे ते लांब जाऊन जवळ येणार, लांब आहे ते जवळ येऊन लांब जाणार, मग पुन्हा सुरू. समुद्रातलं बाष्प वर गेलं, त्याचे ढग बनले, ढग पाऊस बनून जमिनीवर खाली आले, नद्यानाल्यांतून ते पाणी समुद्राला मिळाले पुन्हा ढग बनण्यासाठी.

आपल्या आयुष्यातही हेच, सतत. श्वास-उच्छ्वास-श्वास-उच्छ्वास, उठणे-झोपणे-उठणे-झोपणे सतत चालू. उठतो रोजच आपण, पण रोज उठल्यावर आपल्याला वेगळं वाटतं. कालच्यासारखं आज नसतं आजच्यासारखं कधीच नव्हतं, कधीच नसेल. नैसर्गिक क्रियाप्रक्रियांमध्ये आपण अशी अनंत चक्र अनुभवत असतो. तेच आपण आपल्या आवडीनिवडीत, आपल्या वर्तणुकीतही साहजिकपणे सामावून घेतलं आहे. अगदी आपल्या रंगसंगती, फॅशन सगळीकडे बदल करत करत परत पहिल्या जागी.  आपली कोळीनृत्य पहा. समुद्रच्या लाटांसारखं आलेआलेआले नि गेलेगेलेगेले. आपली आदिवासी नृत्य पहा किंवा लोकनृत्य पहा. संगीतात, गाण्यांत, पदन्यासात असेच पुनरावृत्तीचे अनुभव येत राहतात. भारतीय संगीतात शास्त्रीय पद्धतीने याची आवर्तानांत बांधणी केली आहे. गायन असो वा वादन असो, तालाप्रमाणे कुठेही फिरून कलाकार समेवर येतोच, नी तिथून पुन्हा उठतो. १० मात्रा, ११ मात्रा, १४-१६ मात्रा असतील, ताल कुठलाही असो, राग कुठलाही असो पण समेवर येणं काही चुकणार नाही. त्यात कंटाळवाणा तेचतेचपणा नसतो. प्रत्येक आवर्तन वेगळं , प्रत्येक आवर्तनाचं नाविन्य वेगळं, प्रत्येक आवर्तनातलं सर्जन वेगळं, सृष्टीचं व्यक्त होणंच जणू.

भारतीय परंपरेत, धार्मिक विचारांत विश्वाच्या चक्रागार गतीचा फ़ार खोलवर विचार केला आहें. आपल्या अनुभावांच्याच नाही तर आपल्या अनुभवक्षमतेच्याही मर्यादा जाणल्या आहेत आणि त्याच्या पलिकडे असलेली विश्वाची अगाधता जाणून घ्यायचा प्रयत्न केला आहे. समजापलिकडच्या गोष्टी उमगून घ्यायचा प्रयत्न केला आहे. अनेकदा आपले अनुभव एकदिशी असतात. काळ पुन्हा येत नाही, येऊ शकत नाही असे आपले अनुभव सांगतात. जन्म घेतल्यावर बालपण, तरुणपण, वार्धक्य नि शवटी मरून संपून जायचं असे आपले अनुभव आहेत. पण विश्वात काही निर्माण होत नाही नि काही नष्टही होत नाही. सृष्टीत जे आहे ते आहे. संपूर्ण सृष्टीचा आत्मा समान आहे, एक आहे. त्यामुळे जन्म म्हणजे आरंभ आणि मृत्यू म्हणजे अंत असं असू शकत नाही.  जन्म-मृत्यू-जन्म-मृत्यू अशा अथक अनंत आवर्तनांतला जन्म ते मृत्यू एव्हढाच भाग आपल्या पार्थिव अनुभवांना जाणवतो. म्हणून मग पुढच्या जन्मला पुनर्जन्म असं नाव दिलं. वैश्विक पातळीवर जसा पुनर्जन्म तसाच पुनर्मृत्यू, दोन्ही एकच. 

सृष्टी अशी आवर्तनांनी बनलेलेी आहें कारण विश्वच मूळी एक आवर्तन आहें. आपल्या समजूतीसाठी त्या आवर्तनांचे भाग करून त्यांना नावं दिली आहेत.  सत्यतुग, त्रेतायुग, द्वपारयुग, कलियुग नि पुन्हा सत्ययुग असा काल फिरत असतो. काल आणि कालौघाने त्याबरोबर फिरणारे विश्व अनादी अनंत आहेत. अनेक शहरांत पर्यटनासाठी चक्राकार फिरणारी हॉप-ऑन-हॉप-ऑफ बस असते ना, आपण पाहिजे तेव्हा पाहिजे तिथे चढतो नि पाहिजे तेव्हा पाहिजे तिथे उतरतो. तोच आपला प्रवास, तोच आपला विश्वाचा अनुभव. बस मात्र चालूच असते, अव्याहत. तिचा प्रवास संतत आवर्तानांचा, ना सुरुवात ना शेवट.

कळलं ना, कोंबडी आधी की अंडं आधी ते ? !

Money Is A Vestige Of Evolution And Adults Need To Return To Childhood

Money Is A Vestige Of Evolution And Adults Need To Return To Childhood 

If there is one immolation common across all species of animals, birds and fish then it is feeling of insecurity. Everybody out there in nature is permanently on watch, even while asleep. Nobody there can afford to have hours of deep sleep, nobody can afford to sleep like a log. They would simply be eaten away. Even when they are sleeping their ears or noses are awake to respond immediately. From mightiest elephant, strongest tiger to tiniest insect everybody is in permanent state fear. After insecurity about survival is addressed, there next imminent insecurity is about food. Nobody has assured food supply and when supply is abundant there is no guarantee that they will able to avail it. Different animals adopt different strategies to keep themselves well fed. Most common strategy is to eat quickly whenever and whatever food is available. Carnivores typically eat very fast, for a pack hyenas often shoo away family of lions from its kill. Herbivorous animals and birds usually have much more food availability but they have to spend lot of time and energy into watching they don’t get preyed. Many species of monkey have cavities just after their mouth. They gulp food when available and store it in those cavities to be chewed later. Barring very few species, mostly of insects, nobody else has any significant ability to safely store food to be eaten  at a later time.

After early ancestors of humans came down from trees and became hunter-gatherers, they also developed a skill which is very rare and very limited in animal kingdom. This skill is communication , language. This helped to act in collective actions. They managed to garner collective strength which was far greater than sum of individual strength. This helped them to gather food more than their immediate hunger, more than their needs of near future. This was first stage of stocking. Gradually their power over food supply and security increased, and consequently their population also increased. Even then their strength was very small in front of vagaries of nature. In addition they had another competitor - animals of their own species. In the process of getting top of uncertainties they went into habit of amassing. Amassing food, and means of producing food, increasing area of dominance of the tribe became part of nature. As humans evolved further and their social arrangements became more complex, these necessities turned into wealth. At the next stage of evolution humans realised that instead of fighting with neighbouring tribe it is fruitful to make peace and deal with them. This developed into exchanges and further into trade. Core interests in this remained to increase safety and security and to increase areas of influence, aka control. As trade evolved alongwith means of travel and communication there needed to be common ways fo valuing material wealth that was traded. From this need arose money. Ways and means of this common denominator, money, started taking predominance over wealth that was to be valued using money. Money became wealth in itself, the most important wealth. 

By this time evolution gathered speed, so much speed that earlier timeframe of evolution became redundant and we had to coin a new term called development.In this period of development there have been humungous changes in material situation of humans but during this time there are hardly any changes in anatomy and physiology.  This period of development is very small in evolution’s clock. Consequently human psychology has remained almost unchanged from that of animal kingdom. Though there is no practical need, humans still feel that ancient insecurity and then they act and react in that animal fashion. So this desire to earn more and more money, to accumulate more and more wealth is a vestige that did not get removed even when its time has long gone. 

In animal kingdom, after the time used for searching/hunting for food and feeding themselves, rest of the time goes in intermittent resting, being watch and using strategies to stay safe. Humans have developed abilities due which demand on time for food has reduced to a fraction of amount of time animals need for that. Also human achieved high level of safety and security through social arrangements and through technology. They no more need to be on guard. Humans can afford to sleep like a log … for eight hours. What do they do with the time left in hand ? Animals just rest and stay away from danger. Humans have developed mental and emotional abilities that don’t let them stay idle. Humans need to dream, think, act. So they go on to provide for future. Even after this a lot of time is left at hand. Humans use all that time to do what their genes tell them should be done at such times. They earn more money, more and more money, to amass wealth, as much as wealth as can be amassed.  So much so that amassing money and wealth has become an end in itself. This has diverse adverse effects. Firstly humans lose pure joy of doing, learning. Children do things, learn things purely because thats what they want to do. Everything is play, everything is fun. Though human ability to develop is unbound, the resources available in nature and wealth that humans can create is not infinite. This puts humans in competition with each other. Competition is often good as it stretches human abilities. But an unbound desire to own finite available wealth has ended up in a few owning a lot and a many hardly getting anything. Ever increasing human abilities and focus on material wealth has put ever increasing stress on finite resources available on this earth. Resources are getting eroded much faster than they can be replenished. 

We have been hearing some of these later things for decades now without any change. We are faced with core questions of ‘if not this then what?’. These questions are in two forms - what and how. First question is ‘If not money then what  ?’ and the second is ’If not earn then do what ?’.   Answer to the first is giving off our focus on money and monetary wealth, a psychological vestige of evolution. And then return to our childhood. Learn things for sheer amusement of learning, do things for the sheer joy of doing, get better at doing for sheer amazement of bettering ! Life will be so much joy

(Note: These are thoughts emerging from silent thinking)

Privacy

Privacy

A few years ago there were huge debates world over about net neutrality. It was about whether service providers, search engines can choose what to show and what not. Their argument was that since we provide so we decide. Argument was that in these days of increasing importance of data and internet it is citizens right to have access to everything and to chose from those. Curtailing net neutrality would axe fundamental right to information.

In 2016 US presidential elections its accused that Facebok shared user data with its customers without permission. Cambridge Talentica in UK is accused to have used that data on their data analytics to know about inclination of users and then based on those analyses promote  selective material to influence americans’ voting decisions. Cambridge Analytica closed down 2017. 

Our personal data today has evolved into being a significant portion of our identity. So data is private and data analytics are paparazzi. If somebody peeps into our bathroom then our privacy of physical body is breached, for that one person. If a camera is placed there without our knowledge and recording is shared /sold to say hundreds or thousands then our physical privacy is breached to that much wider extent. Converting viewing to data caused wider breach of our physical privacy.

Suppose a popular fitness club developed data analytics technology. They fix cameras in all shower rooms, changing rooms and from those recordings of users they analyses physical dimensions, skin texture and colour, perspiration, sound recording of what users sing or speak there and so on. Then they sell these analyses to companies making clothing and dinnerwares, to matrimonials, to beauty products, to political marketers like Prashant Kishor. 

Until now this was group data without identifying individuals. Going further, based on their facial recognition software they identify individuals and link this data to their members’ database, and from there to geographical locations, to social media, to professional affiliations and then to family members and friends and co-relate all these to help interested businesses to present selected material, and in a way direct selections, behaviour, choices, opinions of individually and collectively. Important to note here that in all these, from camera recording to presenting selected materials there was no human intervention at any moment, and in classical sense there may was misuse but not breach of privacy. But the effects and impact was profoundly deeper and wider than a person watching us though a peep hole. With data and data analytics so much can be known about you that your name, even whole of your physical identity becomes almost irrelevant.

They can get know more about you than you know yourself. And I haven’t yet even mentioned government !

𝗛𝗮𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱𝟭𝟵 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲 ?

To make any definitive claim one way or other we need to be certain that we are checking adequate number of population. Currently India is testing very low percentage of population compared to most leading countries and is increasing this number. If we are capturing large proportion of infected population then as testing increases then ratio of positives detected to number of tests should decrease. Also, roughly speaking, states with high testing should have low positives to tests ratio and states with low tests should have high ratio of positives to tests. The first does not seem to happening. Let us also have look at the later part of the statement. 


UP is testing 139 per million population and its positives ratio is 3.9%. 

For Maharashtra it is 626 and 6.3 %

Delhi - 1283 and 8.2 %

Gujarat - 462 and 6.4%

Rajasthan - 829 and 2.7%

Tamilnadu - 601 and 3.7%

MP - 341 and 6%

Kerala - 553 and 2.1 %

Clearly there is no correlation between testing density and positives/tests ratio. And hence it is inappropriate to make any claim based on these figures.

In spite of these we observe that positives to testing ratio in India is 4.7%. This is extremely low compared 10-25% observed in many western countries. Common sense suggests that if testing is low then as testing increases positives ratio should increase. That clearly is not happening. What could be happening.

It is important to note that India is testing patients with high degree of sysmtpoms (also if patient of respiratory disease dies then he/she is not tested posthumously to check if he had Covid). Symptoms of Covid19 are similar to many other respiratory infections and it is almost impossible to diagnose Covid19 without test results. Is it possible that Covid19 in India is getting mixed in other respiratory diseases ? Lets hav a quick look at that data

India population : 135 Cr

India death rate : 7.3 per thousand

Annual deaths : 9855000

monthly deaths : 821250

% deaths due to TB and respiratory infections: 7.6%
(these do not include non infectious respiratory diseases)

monthly deaths due to TB and respiratory infections: 62145

Consider death rate to be 0.5% for these infections
Monthly patients of TB and respiratiory infections: 1,24,83,000
Assume 20% go to doctor for treatment : 2496600
Number of these patient in one and half months: 37,44,900

We have tested 3,84,000.
That is about 10% of the total symptomatic population of non-Covid19 patients of respiratory infections. If we consider non-infectious diseases like asthma, which may show similar symptoms, then this percentage becomes even lower.

Bases on this data we can conjecture that until now Covid19 maybe getting covered up under huge number of already existing respiratory diseases. We really dont know how big it is. At present we can only say that it does not seem to have grown to size to affect existing large population of respiratory illnesses.


To really understand spread of Covid19 in India we need to either increase testing multifold or find out Covid19 symptoms those are different from other respiratory diseases.