COVID DIARIES: VIRUS vs WE

By Dr. Yogesh Gupta

"In a war imagine what happens if the same soldier whom we have put trust

to protect us suddenly feels other way. So in a pandemic which was even

worse than a war, the healthcare industry which was trusted upon by the

mankind to protect and treat got mutated.

Virus was an enemy whom we all knew was causing the devastation

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9789361728914

Book preview

Covid Diaries Virus Vs We

Mutations that Killed

Dr. Yogesh Gupta

Ukiyoto Publishing

All global publishing rights are held by

Ukiyoto Publishing

Published in 2023

Content Copyright © Dr. Yogesh Gupta

ISBN

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

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Dedication

My wife Dr. Geeta and my two angels, Manya and Arayna.

For all the support and love. They make me a better human and a doctor

To all the corona warrior who gave their part of life to serve without demands

To all the humans who suffered due to virus and fellow humans

Contents

Introduction

A News Flash

We Were Caught Napping- An Arrogant And Divided World

My Trip And Real World Scenario

First Response- Completely Out Of Box And What An Idea Sirji!

Human Psychology: Fear Is Ultimate Weapon

Fear: I Got Taste Of Fear

First Mutation: You Suffer I Profit

Naked Dance For Profit

Partners March Ahead

Lesson That No College Can Teach

Every Day Was A Sunday Or Covidday

Life And Economy Both Are Important

Invited For A Feast

Invisible Enemy

An Unacceptable Mutation/ Enemy

We Did Have Real Warriors Between Us- Though Never Acknowledged

Covid Did Not Spare Me

Vaccine Against Virus But Not Against Human Psychology

Guerilla War: Many Super Powers Have Lost War By This Technique

Humans You Will Not Have Oxygen To Breathe, Earth To Bury, Fire To Cremate-Nature Warns

Nature Always Balances The Equilibrium

My Sin Vs Your Sin

Lessons Learnt

About the Author

Introduction

N

ow every soul on earth (scientific or nonscientific) knows that earth was struck by a covid pandemic. Everyone knows that a pandemic comes once in a hundred years and now we know what caused it and what happened with crores and crores of people. We all know the new vocabulary like lockdown, quarantine, isolation, RT PCR testing, rapid testing, medicines required to treat, vaccines, Mrna vaccines, Covishield, covaxin and so on.

But when it started it was a lot different. When it went through its journey a lot of things happened. There are lots and lots of stories about the sufferings, about lockdowns, isolations, queues, win over covid, good Samaritans, bad citizens, profiteering, vaccine inequalities and what not.

One such story is of mine and how I saw this whole disaster unfolding. I had an opportunity to dawn various hats. I was a doctor, a writer, a debater in live TV shows, a father, a neighbor and a citizen. I also had the opportunity to work closely with various people associated with different chains of supply and logistics in healthcare.

So then I thought of putting forth a doctor's view about the whole tragedy. There are chapters that happened in sequence and there are real time data that are put as a proof of the happenings in the world. I am definitely going to say that there is no fiction in any of the chapters.

I am also putting a disclaimer that I am not a judge or a lawyer who is taking any sides or passing any judgements. Whatever I am putting here is my and my opinion, some may agree, some may relate and some may feel offended and some may chuck it off.

So here is my covid diaries. Bear with me.

A News Flash

I

t was Christmas time all over the world. We in India were always excited for any holidays or any festivals that come our way. We like to celebrate, dance, have fun, eat out and have any vacation we get to travel out. So 2019 Christmas was no different. Schools were closed for 6 to 7 days and offices were also lenient regarding the presence and so everywhere there was an environment of celebration. Places near the beaches were all house full, major metropolitan cities were also having late night bashes. Small towns had their own way of celebrations. In all it was all fun around my city also.

I was attending my regular OPD on 2nd January 2020 in the city of Ahmedabad in India. I am a Senior Physician practicing in the city for almost 20 years. I am associated with a big corporate hospital in the city where there are almost every specialty present. In between break we were sitting in the Doctors lounge for a sip of tea. Our day to day life during break was full of gossip, leg pulling, odd or interesting case discussions, some happenings in the city or world or maybe any new medical upgrades. One of the doctors informed the forum about a news flash telling that there is a possible outbreak of some pneumonia cases i.e. lung infection somewhere in China Wuhan. Now such news flashes are common in our practice, so we discussed this as a passing remark. Such news flashes were even common in India due to the vastness of the land and the sadly underdeveloped medical sector in the country. And so human psychology took the front seat and we dismissed this as one another insignificant news flash which has nothing to do with us practicing in Ahmedabad or India. It was a Chinese problem as one of my friends laughed ‘Who cares, it's Chinese. They always have such clusters as they eat everything under the sun’. Let’s get back to work.

Rightly also these were initial days.  If we start panicking with every such news flashes of unknown clusters of outbreaks then may be daily we will be locking ourselves down.

So better sense prevailed and we moved to our individual work. The rest of the days went by as normal or routine.

We Were Caught Napping- An Arrogant And Divided World

Initial days-January 2020 to March 2020

A doctor’s initial response- Human psychology

S

o now is the time to introduce to all of you the friends and doctors who were with me throughout this mixed journey of devastation and courage/ life and death/ sufferings and prayers.

As I said before we doctors had a routine protocol of tea breaks in between our daily schedules. The doctor lounge was our hideout. We call it NUKKAD.

In the doctors lounge there were two teams of doctors that I would like to introduce.

One is a team of doctors who are part of NUKKAD. We are a team of four doctors who are together in this hospital for as long as 16 years. We have developed a separate bondage which has nothing to do with our specialty of practice or age. We know everything about each other. Come what may if we are in the hospital we will meet and if we are not then we will call. It was not necessary that we have to talk sense. We just have our own zone and we enjoy that a lot.

Another team are those doctors who may come to the doctor lounge if they wish to have a cup of tea. They are not regular visitors. There are many in the hospital who work outside also and so they see their patient and go away to their next destination of practice.

So the doctors in the NUKKAD team are namely: Dr Shah, Dr Desai, Dr Opthalmo and me i.e. Dr Gupta. So people, this are your characters for the rest of the book.

It is Dr Shah, he is a senior orthopaedician, a content man and always practicing his specialty with heart. He was one who was never touched by the evils of medicine.

Dr Desai, a young Gynecologist, an able hand. He was considered a High risk Obstetrics doctor. (Do not misread this as a doctor who is a high risk to patient but read it as one who is expert in treating all high risk cases in this department).

Dr Ophthal, a witty guy, a childhood friend of Dr Shah. He has many philosophies about life, economy, politics, religion but it was only he who understood his talks. Rest of us were like Boss please make him stop.

When we four sat in that Doctor lounge it was always fun. We talked, chatted, made fun of or gossip about everything. 

It was a routine day for all of us. It was our We time in the doctor lounge.

Dr. Shah This is a Chinese virus, it will be the same like a fire cracker with no sound. Made in China has no guarantee. What say Dr? He asked me.

I said with a voice of authority Perfectly said sir, these Chinese people have no work. They eat everything from cockroaches to animals. Their bats are all infected and they spread it to people. But why care boss. Let them suffer.

Dr. Desai But remember SARS and Swine flu. It also started like this and it caused problems for us.

Dr. Opthalmo Desai, why do you care? Even if it spreads it’s not going to cause pregnancy to go down. Chill boss, it's going to be your days. Christmas has just gone and you should be ready for your heavy opds.

Dr Desai, looking a bit angry You are one sick person. No point discussing with you. Just drink your tea and move on.

There was huge laughter as usual.

By then there was a news alert on my mobile. It did give me a jitter for a while

China has shared the genomic sequence of their first patient with WHO. It said that it was not SARS virus that was causing the problem in WUHAN but it was something new. They named it Coronavirus.

I gave that news to my nukkad friends.

"Boss, do you know this is a new virus and is not SARS. It is named CORONAVIRUS.

For a few seconds all eyes were towards me.

Dr. Opthalmo spoke a few foul words and shouted and cursed Chinese as if they were listening to him.

Dr. Shah Boss this is out of syllabus. I left many bacteria, viruses and fungi in the microbiology part while doing MBBS. There were so many of them. Who cares? I am an orthopaedician, even if my patient has them I refer it to an infectious specialist.

Dr. Desai Leave this discussion. We are not going to China for vacation. And we have no Chinese patients as medical tourism patients. So why bother? Let them suffer corona borona. Let’s move people, patients will be waiting for us in OPD’s.

Few more foul words to Chinese and their science were spoken loudly as we dispersed to our own OPD.

Though this was a small time tea break discussion. One thing which should alarm the people was that this discussion that happened was between doctors. Since they were not alarmed, pretty much nobody in the world was alarmed. This was pretty much the same discussion everywhere around the world between doctors in day to day practice.

How this virus caught us with surprise can be understood by this time line.

4 January 2020: WHO reported on social media that there was a cluster of pneumonia cases – with no deaths – in Wuhan, Hubei province.

5 January 2020: WHO published first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus.

10 January 2020: WHO issued a comprehensive package of technical guidance online with advice to all countries on how to detect, test and manage potential cases, based on what was known about the virus at the time. This guidance was shared with WHO's regional emergency directors to share with WHO representatives in countries.

Based on experience with SARS and MERS and known modes of transmission of respiratory viruses, infection and prevention control guidance were published to protect health workers recommending droplet and contact precautions when caring for patients, and airborne precautions for aerosol generating procedures conducted by health workers.

12 January 2020: China publicly shared the genetic sequence of COVID-19.

13 January 2020: Officials confirm a case of COVID-19 in Thailand, the first recorded case outside of China. 

20-21 January 2020: WHO experts from its China and Western Pacific regional offices conducted a brief field visit to Wuhan.

28 January 2020: A senior WHO delegation led by the Director-General traveled to Beijing to meet China’s leadership, learn more about China’s response, and to offer any technical assistance.

30 January 2020: The WHO Director-General reconvened the Emergency Committee (EC). This was earlier than the 10-day period and only two days after the first reports of limited human-to-human transmission were reported outside China. This time, the EC reached consensus and declared to the Director-General that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

WHO’s situation report for 30 January reported 7818 total confirmed cases worldwide, with the majority of these in China, and 82 cases reported in 18 countries outside China.

If you closely follow the timeline. WHO and China actually made the world loose effectively 20 days in not declaring this as a possible pandemic. Almost 7800 cases have happened in WUHAN in span of 20 days. WHO visited China twice in that time.

And remember it started from Christmas. Chinese data showed first case detection on 30th December. Lot of Chinese were on foreign lands for their vacation as it was also their big festival. Spread was eminent.

Such news of various clusters around the world do come from time to time and they disappear as fast as they come in the news.

World Superpower response: Arrogance

Another day, somewhere around February 28th 2020, another Nukkad chai pe charcha (Team break discussion). We were having our tea and actually discussing the new shows on TV. In India also Netflix, Amazon Prime has started its spread.

Dr. Shah Boss we all should see the new show on Netflix: ZOO. It is like a sci-fi show which shows how nature becomes more powerful than humans. All animals become violent and intelligent and are taking over the world.

Dr. Desai No way. If you want to see it then watch- Planet of Apes and its sequel. All humans were monkeys and eventually monkeys or Apes will rule us.

Dr. Opthalmo Boss, stop all these absurd shows. I am sure there is something Mr. Modi is planning (Mr. Modi is our Prime Minister at present). Mr. Modi starting his speech with MITRON (friends) is good enough to miss a heartbeat. All these shows you are talking about have no horror value. Never forget his speech on 8th of November 2016, 8pm when he started by saying MITRON and then bang. All our money became paper. (On that day he declared demonetization and made all major money notes illegal). I will always say just invest in Gold.

We were moving from one topic to another with the speed which we always do. From politics, to medical politics, to management gossip to world news.

I was closely following this virus in China as it was like some sci fi horror medical nightmare. I was active on social media platform and so