Ban on All Private Vehicles to Continue Until April 14 – Kota Srinivas Poojary
Mangaluru: The district minister in-charge Kota Srinivas Poojary in his video message announced that all the private vehicles are banned from April 3 to 14. The district administration has taken all the necessary measures to stop the virus from spreading further.
In his video message, Kota Srinivas Poojary said, “All private vehicles are banned. Only the vehicles with permission are allowed to move on the road. We have found many people unnecessarily moving around in the city during this critical time. I urge the public to fully co-operate in our fight against COVID-19. In the last 2 days, no positive COVID cases were registered in DK. From April 2, we are distributing rice to 2.71 lakh BPL families. I request those who receive a call from the fair price shop should collect the rice. I also urge the shop owners to deliver the rice to the BPL cardholders to avoid the rush at their premises”.
Kota Srinivas further said, “Discussions are going on regarding the Talapady gate which is now closed. The Kerala government has approached the court to open the gate. We have also moved the Supreme court. MP Nalin Kumar Kateel has discussed the issue with the CM and he assured full support”.
Kota Srinivas also said, “People should not panic as we have enough essentials supplies which they can avail from 7 am to 12 noon. People should always maintain social distancing. Everyone should cooperate with the Asha workers when they come to your houses. Instructions have been given to take strict action against anyone taking the law into their hands and abuse the Asha workers, doctors, nurses or the police.”
“Prime minister Modi has requested everyone to join hands to eliminate COVID-19 from our country. PM Modi has also called every citizen to join hands by lighting the lamps on Sunday, April 5 at 9 pm for 9 minutes to dispel darkness. We should all join hands on Sunday,” urged Minister Kota Srinivas Poojary.
It’s a v good move to restrict traffic. But what about senior citizens. They can’t walk all the way to the shops to get essentials. e g . I’m s c taking care of MOM who’s 86. I can’t leave her alone for a long time. If I walk at slow pace, wait at the outlet for my turn and walk back hours will go by. And its time to collect Pension for there is cash crunch. Plz advise….God bless.
While the enormity of the spread of the virus is truly mind-boggling I am not entirely sure the enforced shutting down of the economy is going to be a good idea. I make no attempt to belittle or besmirch the sincere efforts the authorities are putting in in order to contain the spread of the virus, there are far too many variables in this which will result in drastic unintended consequences down the line.
No doubt the elderly and the vulnerable should be quarantined however shutting down the whole system for uncertain duration will bring nothing but misery to our future generations. There is no right or wrong solution to how this pandemic has to be handled however we face a devil and deep sea situation – guillotine or death by thousand cuts and I don’t take it lightly when I say this. At some point we all have to bite the bullet and count the casualties, because the virus may come back in mutated form in a year’s time. Are we going to shut down the system once again? My view is governments are overreacting because they do not know what to do and hence would like to be seen to be doing something.
As far as I have looked up no country/government has analysed the long-term economic impact of this lockdown. Ever since the 2008-09 economic crisis, the world was on borrowed time. Nothing was mended at that time, instead governments printed trillions in order to pull wool over the whole scandal. Now this Covid virus has been that external pinprick that has truly burst the over-inflated bubble. It could have been anything else but virus turned out to be the one.
As far as I can see businesses will collapse worldwide due to this lockdown, unemployment will rise and it is going to bring about untold economic misery all around us. We will enter into decades of global depression. All the western governments and their citizens were already neck-deep in debt and this lockdown is the ultimate icing on the cake. We may even go back a century when it comes to prosperity/social wellbeing. Most small and medium sized businesses hold cash enough for a month. Nobody has tried to understand what will happen when we go beyond a month but governments are mandating that they pay their employees. And these small businesses form 70% of the whole economy.
May be I should leave it to our in-house expert Drona to elaborate on this but coming to the virus itself, I am not entirely convinced it can be compared to the likes of plague. The data does not fit together. The number of affected and the casualties for the most part are within the range for a normal winter flu season (with may be a few aberrations in some places). It is true that we do not have a panacea yet but according to the experts, majority of the people are either not aware that they had the virus while many others have gotten better. The only common factor among the casualties appears to be those with weaker immune system – either the elderly or those with other health conditions. While I have sympathy for them but my point is how long is this going to continue? What is the trade-off we are all going to agree on at some point? If we all sat at home through the winter, we can even beat the common cold but at what cost? If we continue to lockdown the whole country for another 3 months, with the summer season coming up we may beat the virus but then the government will have another set of worries to deal with, such as inflation, unemployment, suicides, broken families etc. In the last 15-20 years, our expectations and sense of entitlements in life have gone too far high. Imagine in this scenario the breadwinner of the family losing job. It affects the entire family. It affects their children’s future. This oncoming recession is something not any of us have seen in our lifetime. May be when we enter into an economic depression in a few years, the governments and people will realise this drastic shutdown of the economy (which is happening today) was a bad idea. The governments are doing these things not so much as they have concern for all of us, instead it is more of a face-saving exercise for them because they have been caught with their pants down. They were least prepared. They have millions to spend on horse-trading using 5-star resorts but are now begging the public for donations.
There is another aspect here – The Asian countries, many of which are still ‘developing’, should not have gone for such drastic measures like their western counterparts have taken up. May be India could have shutdown international air travel back in mid-February but should have kept the domestic economy going. We would have recovered faster. Now all of us will end up in the same ditch. Western governments (mainly Europe) were nearly bankrupt anyway and were looking for an excuse and this virus is a godsend for them so they can now blame everything on the virus, whereas for India the gross over-reaction was not at all necessary.
Again, this is my view. I hope I end up being proven wrong on the predictions I have made above.
Why can’t we have a clear cut plan on how to tackle this situation instead of changing the rules every day? What is the point of having shops open from 7 to 12? people will flock to the supermarkets and the whole purpose of the lockdown is lost. I also cannot understand how people travelling in a car or bike can spread the virus. Even if they are just driving to have fun instead of sitting at home they cannot spread the virus.