View From Ambassador Deepak Vohra: Honorary Chairman Of FairGaze Advisory Board

This analysis has been sent to us by Ambassador Deepak Vohra, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister, Lesotho, South Sudan, Guinea-Bissau etc. One of India’s most outstanding Ambassadors, he was our Ambassador to Armenia, Georgia, Sudan, South Sudan, Poland and Lithuania, and countries including all of the above and to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils Kargil and Leh. He has made a careful study of the country-wise data of the total numbers of cases including new ones, total number of deaths including new ones and the mortality rate per million.

He reports:
Based on his study these are some of his considered conclusions:

1) Of the 200 plus countries/ territories affected by CV, only the US and fifteen West European countries account till today for well over 80 percent of the cases and casualties (!!) Relatively speaking, Canada and the East European countries including Russia have proved far more resilient.

2) Among the Asian countries, Chinese figures are totally bogus and no definite conclusions can, therefore, be made, excepting that since the pandemic originated and peaked in Hubei long before any other part of the world, China is seemingly on the way to recovery. However, risks do remain from unaccounted for asymptomatic cases and from people returning from abroad, whether foreigner or Chinese.
South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam have all done far better than the West in managing the crisis. Most South Asian countries including India have also escaped the ill effects of the CV pretty well so far. Only Pakistan and probably Afghanistan remain problematic because of poor politics and weak health infrastructure.

3) Primarily because of Iran, the Gulf countries have fared relatively poorly but still better than the West, though, amazingly enough, broken countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen have so far avoided any significant outbreak. There is a health lesson here not to be missed.

4) The Virus has just started making inroads into Africa and Latin America and so it is too early to say what the future holds. His guess is that it would be far less destructive than in the sixteen Western countries mentioned above.

5) Judging from all the above, his “inexpert” conclusion is that while anyone can be infected by the CV, the people really in danger are old, white and rich in that order. Astonishingly enough, the poor have proved to be surprisingly resilient so far, especially if they are young which they tend to be. Is Nature trying to tell us something?

This is indeed a personal assessment.

The link for the statistics is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
With 17% of the world’s population, India has so far under 4,000 detected infections and less than 100 deaths. We have responded magnificently. The world watches in admiration and joy! Of course the lockdown is hurting our people, especially those in the informal sector. But then the choice is between saving lives or saving livelihoods! Stay blessed.

Stay safe! Vande Mataram! Ambassador Deepak Vohra