Opinion | How to win the war against the coronavirus: control emotions, stop the blame game and unite against the common enemy
- We must support medical workers by ensuring they have enough protective gear and by practising social distancing
- Governments must keep a clear head and make hard choices between lives and livelihoods
One of the upsides of the lockdown is that one gets read books one should read, but never had the time for. Former deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s new book Backstage: The Story behind India’s High Growth Years, is an illuminating inside picture of how leaders emerge at a time of crisis.
His brilliant quote of Italian political philosopher Machiavelli is spot on for this age of pandemics: “At the beginning, a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose, but as time passes, not having been treated or recognised at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure.
“The same thing occurs in affairs of state. By recognising from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state ... they can be cured quickly. But when they are not recognised and left to grow to the extent that everyone recognises them, there is no longer any cure.”
Prescient words indeed.
The battle against Covid-19 is a war, as damaging as physical war. It is first and foremost an emotional war, not just a financial, economic, social or geopolitical war.