As anyone who has diligently stuck with all the precautions and routines will tell you, the new rules of living in the COVID world do tend to get tedious after some time. Constant sanitisation, social distancing, being aware of your hands and the masks, especially the masks. It is not uncommon or surprising for laxness to creep into what should be an otherwise airtight routine. But, most of us would agree that the precautions are important and regardless of how tempted one may be to cut corners, the cost of such negligence is generally clear to most. But experiences tell another story.
A recent Reuters article delved into the issue of people, particularly in rural India, tiring of Coronavirus rules at a time when rural cases are surging. The reporters interviewed people from the small town of Baihata Chariali in Assam among other similarly small towns and villages in India. In most cases, they found that life was at it had always been. No masks, no social distancing. Indeed, it was as if the terrifying pandemic was part of a different reality. The reasons for such confident rejection of pandemic safety measures are varied. For many, comfort and convenience may have been the start but many seemed to have also reached a version of reality and facts that suit their confidence. Some have simply not heard of anyone around them being infected or dying. Others are confident that so long as they don't leave their towns or villages and don't allow outsiders to come in, it would remain an urban issue. Many others can't simply be bothered to wear a mask and social distance after a full day of work when they could simply unwind with friends and a hot cup of tea. An interesting point that was raised during the interview was the unfounded belief that India was moving to a form of herd immunity.
Incomplete information is often as dangerous or even more so than misinformation. In this case, garbled theories of possible herd immunity have been ever-present since the pandemic began. As many health experts have noted, herd immunity is not a guaranteed outcome in this scenario and the cost of trying to reach it is too high as it requires a significant portion of the population to have been infected at some point. At a time when the scientific community cannot even ascertain how immunity works with COVID-19, any such assertions are foolhardy and rushed. As the case of Sweden informs, herd immunity is a risky proposition with little pay-off. As the Reuters article pointed out, many in the rural areas follow two simple beliefs that numb them to the danger of the contagion. The first that isolation would somehow protect them and second, a curious brand of fatalism that may arise from long years of hardship. That, and as interviewed officials put it, ' fresh air and vegetables'. This separation of urban and rural in the minds of the people may well be the root cause of the issue of non-compliance of pandemic rules in India. Elsewhere in the world, similar acts of ignorance and callousness are carried out for a different set of reasons. In the US for instance, wearing masks somehow became a partisan issue and wearing one became akin to wearing your political preferences on your sleeves.
Many on the 'right side of the aisle' see orders enforcing the use of masks and social distancing as a form of government control that infringes on their all-important rights. Some have reiterated that the choice to wear or not wear a mask should be given to the citizen regardless of circumstance. Such selfish interpretation of citizenship aside, it is important to note that the American leadership has been part of the problem of mixed signals reaching the populace regarding the use of masks and other similar precautions. Aside from publicly undermining experts such as Doctor Fauci, President Trump has shown visible reluctance to wear masks and many interpret this as a political stance.
It is easy to blame ignorance as the root cause of such issues but that does not address the underlying problem. It is the job of the elected government and its representatives to make sure complete and updated information of such vital nature is disseminated to every section of the society it governs. While a government cannot (in most cases) save someone who does not even acknowledge the threat, it must not use excuses like 'rural ignorance' to discount its duty of keeping its citizens appraised. Thankfully, as many have noted worldwide, the Indian Government has been relatively clear with its pandemic messaging but more needs to be done to reach every corner of this vast and diverse nation.