COVID-19: Fractured society and future challenges.

In December 2019, the novel coronavirus spread from China to the rest of the world and was declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020.[1] The initial fears of high lethality proved unfounded by subsequent research.[2] However, the public perception fuelled by sensational media reports maintained the panic. The associated stigma caused much misery.[3] While the majority of infections with the novel coronavirus are asymptomatic or mild, in some cases it leads to severe disease, occasionally fatal, due to cytokine storm which occurs due to overreaction of immune responses in the host.[4]

The world too overreacted to the perceived threat. Most countries went into overdrive implementing restrictive measures often draconian in nature. The impact on mental health, society, and livelihood got overlooked.

Chasing the virus at all costs has created a catastrophic situation affecting almost all countries. It is estimated that 500 million people may be pushed below the poverty line.[5] Livelihoods have been destroyed and live endangered. Domestic violence against women and children has increased.[6] So has violence against older people,[7] paradoxically the group to be protected from the virus. COVID-related suicides have been reported due to fear, stigma, or guilt of passing infection to other family members.[8]

Add life to years, was the slogan on World Health Day July 7, 2012.[9] For the elderly, life is not about how many more years one lives, but about the quality of life. Physical activity, social contacts, and recreation add life to years. Restrictive measures made all these meaningful activities impossible to indulge in. Social networks got interrupted leading to loneliness and isolation adversely affecting the social and mental well-being of the elderly.

At the other extreme, children bore the brunt of the adverse impact of the restrictive measures. According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), children suffer more from the coronavirus measures than the virus itself. Children need contact with friends their own age. With schools and playgrounds closed, they are deprived of this social connection.[10] Social and educational deficits may handicap the younger generation in earning potential and from leading meaningful lives.

The pandemic increased social inequities, fracturing already fragile societies worldwide with its class and race distinctions.[111213] The rich and privileged, who could work from home, faced fewer setbacks in job and education, compared to the poor workers in the unorganized sector. The affluent often made optimum use of lockdowns to improve family bonding, while continuing to work from home.[11] These are the miniscule but more articulate class in society who influence public policy. On the other hand, thousands of migrants were rendered jobless and forced to walk for miles, the infamous migrant's march.[14] These are the people without any voice. It has been said that lockdowns are not egalitarian. Such interventions increase deaths in the developing world to prolong lives in the developed world.[13] We are heading toward a fractured society.

These voiceless migrants contribute to the main workforce of the unorganized sector in India. The workers in the unorganized sector constitute 82% of industrial workers in the country.[15] There are the most vulnerable beyond the safety net of workplace welfare and mental health measures. Some meager government schemes are in place for them but they are poorly implemented.[15] They remain at the mercy of exploitative employers.

In the coming days, we face the twin challenges of restoring the social and mental well-being of those who have lost their livelihoods and face survival and mental health issues. More challenging would be to reach out to workers in the unorganized sector. Failing in this would lead to social pathology by the way of increase in crime, alcoholism, substance abuse, and other ills threatening civil society. The cost to society, particularly in poor and developing economies, would be many times more than the benefit of lives saved from COVID-19.

The mass obsessive-compulsive disorder around COVID-19 needs to be addressed to restore the social and mental health of populations, or at the least prevent aggravation. Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita can help us understand the human response to the pandemic and the way forward to normalcy.

The pandemic evolved through the three gunas “Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva,” described in Chapter 14, Verse 10 of the Bhagavad Gita. Tamas signifying darkness, destruction, and chaos ruled in the early days of the pandemic. Nothing was known about the novel virus resulting in deaths and destruction mostly in old age homes in the West.[16] Global chaos resulted from the fear of the unknown fuelled by erroneous mathematical models predicting doom.[17] This was followed by Rajas meaning passion, action, and confusion. There was passion of scientists to fight the virus at all costs, action (at times inappropriate) by governments, and confusion due to contradictory messages on social media, sometimes even from experts. Hopefully, we should move on to the third stage, Sattva which advocates goodness, constructive action, and harmony. This is necessary to live with the virus and wean the world away from the obsessive-compulsive disorder around one disease.