Balancing right and wrong in Covid times
Tags: Masks, Ethics, India, Covid 19, Family

Balancing right and wrong in Covid times

It’s hard to tell between right and wrong in Covid times (Photo by form PxHere)

On March 20, 2020, India went into lockdown. Now, this is a nation where family bonds are strong. Parents literally live for their kids, and those same kids when they grow up, take responsibility for caring for their aging parents. This bond also holds true for extended family members including distant cousins who are always meeting up at family functions. But Covid has turned the tables. If you love someone, you must stay away from them. This is especially true if they are in the high-risk age group.

The Lonely People

That is how my elderly mother ended living on her own for nearly six months, with no one visiting her except for a lady who helps her. I had a train ticket booked to visit her the day after the lockdown was declared but it was canceled as the lockdown shut down the Indian railways. My mother has been stuck indoors as it’s what the government advises the old folks to do. We used to call her every day but that’s about all we could do.

Anyway, after waiting five months for the quarantine rules to be relaxed, I gave up and decided to go spend some time with her. This did mean that I would be quarantined for 2 weeks (for crossing the interstate border into Kerala), but that was unavoidable.

Accordingly, I made the 400km trip in 7 hours on a rainy Sunday in early August. I avoided all human contact as far as possible, except for the cops at the checkpoints, and a single stop to refuel. Once I reached home, I went into self-quarantine.

The local government is pretty strict about health. They insist on quarantine for visitors from other states (and not just from other countries). If the cops catch you on the roads without a mask, they can give you a fine of up to Rs 10,000 ($136). The cops also scold you if you are caught outside with older relatives.

My two weeks of quarantine was done with a couple of Sundays later. In the meanwhile, I observed my mother was following the basic precautions recommended by the health authorities. She’d keep social distancing, wear a mask when the lady who helps her drops in and hasn’t been outside our gates. She also follows traditional ways to strengthen her immunity according to what’s available locally. Gooseberries, honey, turmeric, ginger, cloves, and so on in different combinations.

Should older, at-risk folk go out?

So I was a bit surprised when my mother asked me to take her to her bank once my quarantine was done. The thing is my brother lives 20 km away and she hasn’t visited him in 2020, and she wasn’t asking to go there. Maybe the bank visit was important to her. So we masked up, packed the hand sanitizer, and drove down to her bank. She wandered off inside, met the staff, and did whatever she had to do.

On leaving the bank, she asked me to take her to Spencer’s, a local supermarket chain. Ok, she hasn’t been to a supermarket in six months and probably needed the break. Still, I was relieved to see that the place was mostly deserted. Most of the salesladies were taking orders on the phone for home delivery. The few customers who were at the store were all younger than my mother so it would seem that most older folks were playing it safe.

Spencer’s didn’t have all the stuff she needed. So she asked me to stop over at another supermarket on the way home. I usually avoid this place as there's no parking, and it’s opposite the local police station, and not exactly the place to block up traffic. But Covid had thinned the traffic, and I was easily able to find parking. My mother picked up her stuff, and we finally got back home.

Looking back, maybe it was foolhardy to allow my mother to go out. But I felt she deserved a day out after having gone by the book for over five months.

The thing is it’s risky for old folk to go out unnecessarily. But where does one draw the line? Should I be drawing the line at all? Or is it her call?

Then there’s this other friend who I was just speaking to. He says his physically active 90-year-old Dad is sick of staying home and worried about his farm. So he occasionally quietly slips out of his home, catches the public transport bus to his farm, and enjoys his day out. The cops stop him every now but since he’s on his own, there’s not much they can do. There’s also no way my friend can keep his grandad home other than by physically stopping him, and that’s not an option.

Will younger folk stay home?

A friend got to know I was back in town. He picked me up for a game of badminton at one of the local sports clubs where you rent a court by the hour.

Inside the club, it was almost like going back to pre-Covid times. There wasn’t a mask in sight and forget about social distancing. While waiting for my turn to play, I found myself sitting on the courtside bench with people brushing against me on both sides.

The players were mostly youngsters, though a few were in their forties and fifties. Seems the peeps were fed up with staying indoors, and have chosen to ignore the risks. It’s not just the danger of catching Covid themselves, but also the larger risk of passing it on to the older family members at home.

When I casually checked, most players said they took basic precautions once they got home of having a bath before interacting with other family members.

When economics and ethics collide

After five months of lockdown, the local government finally gave in and gave permission for businesses to open up a week ago. As expected with India’s massive population, we soon broke the world record for most Covid cases in a single day. There were 83,341 new cases yesterday. The only consolation is the fatality rate in India is still relatively low with only 68,472 deaths so far.

That is still a lot of deaths but the thing is people need money to live. If a laborer doesn't work, he will not be able to buy food and will starve to death. People need to work. Businesses need to run. Shops need to sell stuff. Sports clubs need to open their doors.

The risk to older folk hasn’t reduced. But the cost of protecting them by total lockdowns is no longer practical. Since no one seems to know what is right, people are trying to balance their lives on their own.

The blurred line between right and wrong

Though it’s hard to breathe while jogging, I do believe a mask may help stop me from taking the virus home. So I will wear a mask when I go out even while exercising. But if I feel that it’s affecting my oxygen intake, I will pop my nose out of the mask, which should work for me as I’m not a mouth breather. You got to compromise somewhere. There’s a story doing the rounds in Indian social media of exercising about someone dying while exercising with a mask. I can’t confirm it but I can say jogging with a mask on is a pain.

However, I won’t be eating out, socializing, partying, or even shopping unnecessarily. And I won’t be going back to the sports club. I wish I could say it’s solely because I don’t want to risk bringing home the virus, but it isn’t. I would have played badminton if my playing skills were half-decent.

The truth is my eye-hand coordination has always been poor. So unless I find players at my level, I risk ruining the game for the other players. However, I’m never going to find players at my level as they won’t be playing if they are so bad. So I’ll be going back to jogging or walking briskly on the now not-so-smoggy roads. It’s boring but better than being a spoilsport.

What if I bring home the virus?

What would my two brothers say, though neither of them lives with her? Well, one is a doctor and meets patients regularly. The second is a businessman. Either can pick up the virus and take it home (only one has an older family member staying at home). They are exposed because they need to work.

Well, I’m exposed because I need exercise to stay healthy. And I need to go pick up stuff, and maybe go out for matters related to my income. There’s also the fact that my immunity will drop if I don’t get exposed to everyday germs, which would then make me more likely to catch Covid. In fact, I sometimes wonder if this Covid obsession with hand sanitizer is a good thing, especially in a country like India where we eat with our hands and risk ingesting the toxic chemicals that linger on our hands. The truth is no one really knows what’s right and wrong as far as Covid goes.

All we can do is to trust our instincts, and hope we are right.