How ready is Sri Lanka for India’s catastrophic Covid wildfire jumping across?

by Bodhi Dhanapala, Canada.

We hear that India has set a world record for Covid infections in a single day, and has even broken it again. It is even short of oxygen. Funeral pyres for burning on pavements and street corners. We also hear that the Covid virus has mutated to a new Indian virus, whose behaviour, i.e., its infective nature and degree of danger are still unknown. In any case, the epidemic is spreading like wildfire in India.

Of course, whatever happens in India, be it a pestilence, a political ‘parippu drop down’, or a religio-nationalist ill wind, they all come to Sri Lanka sooner or later. The recent high incidence of Covid in the Jaffna peninsula may well be the beginning of the ill wind that Lanka should expect from the North very soon.

But is Sri Lanka ready to face such a new wave of Covid? What is the stock capacity of Sri Lanka for oxygen? How much oxygen can Sri Lanka produce for its medical needs? Or, does it depend on supplies from abroad although making oxygen is a straight-forward technology? Has it as yet banned travel between India and Sri Lanka?

How may intensive care units (ICU) does Sri Lanka have when Covid patients require such care? The country has had now one year to get ready for this kind of anticipated third wave and waves that will come from new mutants. The situation seems bleak since the supply of vaccines that Sri Lanka got initially has dried up. The rich and powerful have got their vaccines. Even their drivers and “kussi ammas” have been inoculated. But the vast majority of poor people have had no vaccines.

India is a country where all kinds of “alternative therapies” were promoted and used against the Covid infection, claiming that the ancient medications handed down to them by the Ancient Rishis will “boost the immunity” if people would only drink various brews made out of traditional medicinal herbs. Even drinks made out of cow urine, doing various chants, animal sacrifices etc., were promoted. Of course, it turns out that these alternative therapies actually cost a lot of money although the pretense is claimed that the “dhesheeya” (indigenous) medications are inexpensive.

Even in India, an 8 oz packet containing an Ayurvedic product containing amla (“nelli”), coriander, ginger and a few other such herbs cost anything from $3 to $10! Are they any cheaper in Sri Lanka?

There was also a new twist to all this, where Indian doctors with some western training attempted to push mega doses of Vitamin D and Vitamin C as the solution to fight the epidemic. The same sort of propaganda happened in Sri Lanka. We remember well the misadventures of the Minister of Health and even the Speaker of Parliament in their embrace of the occult sciences.

Even the State Minster of Pharmaceutical Prodution and Supply and Regulation had her hand in these claims. However, we can hope that recent events have taught these people, and the gullible public, that there are no shortcuts to treating new types of infections unknown to mankind except with the power of new science, deployed with a rapidity that is faster than the rate of propagation or mutation of the virus.

The fact that the virus has mutated so many times in the course of one year should not surprise anybody. This is because the lifetime of a virus is short, and even a month is equal to thousands and thousands of virus generations, and this provides sufficiently long time scales for Darwin’s principles of evolution to enact themselves. And yet there are individuals who still refuse to believe that organisms mutate, and claim that Darwin is wrong.

So, assuming that the authorities who previously thought that occult “sciences” and herbal medications can stop the epidemic have learnt their lesson, we can only hope that they face the epidemic by getting ready for the inevitable – namely, a new epidemic of Covid in Sri Lanka, with the spark coming from the wildfire of an epdemic that is now burning in India.

India is challenging China in its quest to become the leader of South Asia. But it has now shown that it cannot even govern itself. It is tied down to its own myths and mystical political ideologies. It has also signed itself into the hands of the devil by becoming a part of the Western Quad in its anger against China. Meanwhile, China has shown the world that it has the determination and the capacity to guide its people in the face of an extreme adversity. Furthermore, the Chinese people have shown a greater degree of rational behaviour than the Indians who have shown little capacity for social discipline.

Can Sri Lanka and its leaders do better?