MyVoice: Views of our readers 6th May 2021

Trust doctors, not WhatsApp

This refers to Dr Ramu Suravajjula's 'Combating the infodemic with digital civility'. The writer rightly mentions that the information which we spread through social messaging apps and social networking apps without verifying its veracity can cause huge impact on recievers. The fake messages which people send about Covid-19 can cause harm to readers if they believe it. People must believe doctors and not Whatsapp.

Kartikey Upadhyay, Vadodara

Deploy Ayush graduates

The government can consider the Ayush graduates to take up Covid duties in all district hospitals. Being trained in Indian medicine as well as Allopathy, these doctors would be very well suited to serve the rural poor. Our visionary CM can well consider this and take appropriate steps immediately.

S Krishnan, Secunderabad

Maximise oxygen supply

Better coordination between the Centre and States and also among the states for arranging uninterrupted oxygen supply where it is needed most is the need of the hour.

Doctors are under stress in hospitals struggling to save serious Covid patients and also with other comorbidities. Covid positivity as well as death rate has already gone very high in India even in wake of only fewer testing for our huge population. In cities, particularly more populace, the situation is precarious as people are not serious too in following Covid protocols. In view of inadequate medical facilities including that of fewer doctors and para-medical staff, we need to first invariably give these frontline warriors the Covid vaccine.

Unutilised ventilators rusting in many government hospitals must be made functional. In order that scarce resources are optimally used the bureaucrats at the helm must galvanise the working conditions of such hospitals. Private hospitals too need to be transparent in giving adequate care to the patients in such emergent situations.

Brij Bhushan Goyal, Ludhiana

Stalin sets an example

The DMK supremo, Stalin is understood to have got furious on two of his party men and suspended them from the party over their vandalising acts on Amma canteen and throwing away two flex boards embossed the name and the pictures of Jayalalithaa, who was the matriarchal figure of rival party. That expelling two own party members for their acts of rudeness towards rival party by the chief sends strong signals to the cadre and gives the leader moral authority in public life. Stalin deserves praise for his graceful gesture that becomes a rarity in political class now. It's unfortunate that West Bengal has been witnessing post poll violence taking fourteen lives in two days. The chief minister Mamata should act in same manner with her counterpart in Tamil Nadu and take stern action against wrong doers with a sense of objectivity.

D V G Sankararao, Nellimarla

Can the world ever unite?

A pandemic should unite theoretically all nations and humanity as one. Instead, we have only massive fights at almost every level. In India, the entire narrative fixes around the central pole of our PM dissolving any sort of balance or sanity. The haters hold him responsible for every single evil in the country including the cat which lapped up their milk or the abusive drunk in their neighbourhood. The lovers make it a point to inform that Modi is responsible for the butterflies looking beautiful in their gardens.

The pandemic has overwhelmed all the countries in the world (except perhaps China). People in the western world are also rebelling against instructions and causing problems for the governments by holding public parties without masks. Vaccination shortage is acute even in the western world. Without exonerating our government which took the extremely foolish step of conducting elections across the country which no political party, media, intellectuals, or the judiciary (perhaps in summer vacation) bothered to oppose, these are just desperate times for the world.

Only two threats could have possibly dissolved borders and joined humanity as one: a pandemic or an extra-terrestrial threat (meteors, asteroids, and maybe aliens too). We have lost the first opportunity; perhaps the second undesired option remains the only hope. Carl Sagan said that we should always strive to become a two-planet species because the frail human mind does not have the intellectual and emotional capacity to protect itself and the Earth indefinitely. We need a back-up.

Another scientist says, our Earth may have reached this stage of civilisation many times before. At a crucial stage of nuclear power development, humans or their equivalents endowed with similar kinds of brains might have simply blown themselves up. Our combined nuclear power has the capacity to destroy humanity and all living life many times over. But, a small corner of the human mind still allows us to live with some optimism as everyone seems to be fighting just about everyone else and solutions become new questions.

Pingali Gopal, Warangal

Say no to total lockdown

Apropos to "PM Under Pressure To Lockdown India" (THI 5 May). It is true that PM and his government are not only under attack for a failure to stem the spread of cases in the second wave and also lack preparedness to tackle the severe strain on health facilities. Like it or not it's indeed true both Centre and State have failed to use the lockdown to improve the health infrastructure both long and short term. There is no clue why the Covid facilities created last year were dismantled. The central and state heads have forgotten what Benjamin Franklin has said "failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail". When the virus was novel, like the rest of the world we had no clue on how the stem spread and lockdown hasty or otherwise was considered necessary. One hopes PM would not announce country-wide lockdown under pressure as it would affect poor and ordinary people more than salaried class and rich.

N Nagarajan, Hyderabad