The ‘New Normal’ of the Corona pandemic

Thingnam Rajshree and Rajendra Kshetri
Contd from previous issue
While the fourth level also known as the tertiary prevention aims at reducing the impact of the established disease by ‘eliminating and reducing disability; minimizing suffering and maximizing potential years of quality life’ and is generally considered as the task of therapy and rehabilitation. (ibid)
Both these steps are also very important while dealing with coronavirus as risk factors play a crucial role as causal factors of infection, transmission and complications.
For instance, a person coming from an economically unstable situation with poor working and living conditions are more prone to getting infected than people who can work online from homes with proper access to good nutrition and health facilities. For a poor person, one day with no work and income can have a huge impact. Many women in Manipur thrive through handloom industries or many other households through agriculture and farming. With the closing of Ima market, they have suffered hugely. Some of them are able to sell their products online but the whole online marketing system also has a brokerage structure behind it which keeps the producers as the poorest of the poor with little to no profit at all and for others, suffering heavy losses. These people are the ones with the greatest risk factors because even maintaining a balanced diet would be close to impossible for them.
 For middle class families and elites who have the luxury of home isolation the situation is better off as both the patient and the families can deal with the situation relatively more comfortably. But for those who have to send their beloved ones to quarantine centres it’s a different scenario altogether and is tantamount to the fear of the dark. For them and also for people who have lost their dear and near ones therapy and counselling are a must so that they have assurity but also the awareness to the uncertainty of the situation and also so that their grief and misery can be lessened.
Proper and accurate awareness about the infection, its complications, risk factors and others which affect the outcome of the situation ought to reach every section of the society. This will help in the timely detection of the disease and to curb it effectively. Understanding the dynamics of the triad distinction and the levels of preventions will be of benefit for the whole society as the current pandemic is something we ought to fight mentally together first so that we can physically do away with it sooner. And with it comes the importance of strategic implementation of interventions, policies and its effective execution by understanding the pandemic from a holistic viewpoint. But more importantly we need to address the cultural and contextual circumstances and situations that come into play so as to make these changes in our lifestyles more accommodable in an equitable way. Each individual along with the society as a whole has to play their roles in whatever way possible; keeping in mind that by doing so we are not saving our own lives but also the lives of others as well.
References:
Outwater, A.H., Leshabari, S.C., Nolte, E., 2017. Disease Prevention: An Overview. The International Encyclopedia of Public Health, 2nd edition. vol. 2, pp. 338–349. Oxford: Academic Press.
Bjørn Hofmann. 25 Oct 2016, Disease, Illness, and Sickness from: The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine Routledge.
*Thingnam Rajshree is a Research Scholar in the Dept. of Sociology, M.U.
**Rajendra Kshetri is Professor of Sociology of Dept. of Sociology, M.U, Imphal.