Everybody Judges

Everybody judges. And unfortunately, most of them will do so with an insufficient understanding of why something is happening. I remember an incident from college that perfectly highlighted this point.

We were in final year. It was early in the semester so a lot of people were actually interested in taking cases (an interest which would clearly diminish in a few months time). Problem was, none of us actually knew how to take cases back then. So it was usual practice to see case files to get an idea of what to do. We asked one of our seniors, who was a house surgeon there, for help but she promptly refused to show us the files.

This infuriated some of my batchmates to the extent that they decided to complain to the HOD, who then granted the request to see the files. The feeling at the time was that this was some great victory for the juniors against the malevolent seniors. Flash forward a year or so and my thoughts on this incident completely changed.

I was now house surgeon and the senior in question was now junior resident. We discovered that we could get along splendidly now that we had no other choice but to work together. She told me her point of view of this incident one day. This was her first posting and she was having a torrid few days adjusting to the new responsibilities, the tempers of the professors and trying to get things done in time. She didn't show the files because she had simply not completed them yet and there was nothing to see inside. So in retrospect, our role in this story did not seem very heroic at all.

The Other Side

It is simply not human nature to try to visualize a situation from the opposite side. So when we see health workers accosted in their car by a mob in Poonthura, we naturally get angry. We feel hurt. And because we've seen it many times before in different scenarios, it is all too relatable. To try to look at it from the other side is feels abnormal. But this is a problem that needs to be understood to be solved. Brute force and moral shaming will only make things more volatile.

Health workers generally get abused to the extent that things get out of control because - a) Someone died b) People are drunk or c) There are criminals on the run or some combination of the three. This recent incident doesn't fall into any of these categories. It's unusual for 60-70 people to go into a frenzy without some underlying reason.

Imagine you are someone who hasn't received much education and are thus unable to appreciate the reasons behind complex decisions. You see many people in your community with no/minimal symptoms be diagnosed with a disease. Suddenly, you see commandos with guns patrolling the streets. It's not hard to imagine why people may get disillusioned.

This is by no means an uncommon reaction. Any doctor who sees a lot of cases in the casualty will know how difficult it is to convince a patient of the significance of an abnormal ECG when he/she doesn't have particularly remarkable chest pain. This is the same problem but on a much larger scale - involving an entire community. You need to somehow make people understand the seriousness of the illness while also preventing mass panic.

The Trigger

These issues provide context but do not completely explain the story. The trigger was a poorly planned lockdown. Now, this would have been an understandable mistake back in April but one should have learnt from the migrant crisis that a sudden, unexpected lockdown can have significant, unforeseen consequences.

The rules of this lockdown has already changed several times in the past 5 days. Initially, it seemed the police were supposed to deliver groceries to all homes before it quickly became apparent how unfeasible that idea was. Shops were then to open at the unusual timing of 7-11 in the morning. And now after the latest events, it seems that timing will be extended till evening but only in select parts of the city that have been badly affected. When the rules are so ambiguous and constantly changing, people will begin to lose faith in the powers that be. I'd warned of this back when the new lockdown started.

 

In some of the videos being shared to show how cruel people were, it actually shows one of them saying "We have no food or water." These are not the words of monsters, these are words of desperation. Yes, in a crowd of this size, there will be jackasses but that is no rationale to dehumanize them all. The health minister has correctly been very careful with her words so as to not villainize the people. One of my professors shared his experience working in the area years back.

As someone who woke up one day with no money to buy food 3 years back, I can certainly sympathize here. That was an incredibly frightening (though thankfully brief) period and I can definitely see why such fear can drive people to do crazy, stupid things.

We need solutions, not shaming

There are no villains in this story. Only victims. The government did what they did because they thought they were doing the right thing in a very challenging situation. But it was just not done in the right way.

The people have no excuse for some of the behavior they displayed but they were driven to this position by circumstances. As was the case with the first lockdown when migrant workers protested (and were beaten by police), it is the poor who are most affected while the privileged respond to their woes with ignorance and apathy.

The health workers are obviously disheartened but unfortunately this the reality of the job. We will blamed for things over which we never had any control. We will be punished for the mistakes of others. Like the soldiers in war, we are but pawns in this pandemic.

But using this incident to shame the people of the area from our privileged, moral high horse will do nothing to solve this problem and may only make things more difficult. For proof of this, one only needs to take a look at the example of America.

In the US, many disagree with the lockdown and a significant number of people think the virus is a hoax and doesn't exist. Months of moral shaming from the opposite side did absolutely nothing to change things and the virus is still raging in several parts of the country there.

This is simply the side effect of government decisions that would have seemed unthinkable only 6 months ago. We need to reach out to these people, try to understand their concerns and rectify them. Involving local leaders or doctors from the area could go a long way to regaining trust.