Rahul quotes expert say more may die due to lockdown than disease

NEW DELHI, May 27: Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said "sooner we get out of lockdown, the better," after talking to a WHO health expert warning that a severe lockdown can cause more deaths than the illness.
Rahul was talking to Prof. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University School of Public Health and Swedish Professor Johan Giesecke, a member of the technical advisory group for infectious hazards of WHO in his series of conversations via video conferences with experts last month. Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Banerjee were among his first few guests. The interaction was put up by the Congress on its social media platforms.
"India would ruin its economy if it has a very severe lockdown," Professor Giesecke said adding that coronavirus, which is a "very mild disease", will affect "almost everyone in the world".
"The disease is very mild. Most people who have it don't even know it. While the old and vulnerable need to be protected from the disease, you may cause more deaths due to a severe lockdown than the illness," he added as Mr Gandhi spoke about the plight of the migrants.
The virus will stay for another 12-18 months, Professor Jha said. "This is going to be there till 2021. If vulnerable people are given a time frame, it might be easier for them to deal with the hardships," the expert suggested.
As Rahul asked him about testing strategies, he said: "Testing everybody is difficult. Strategies like pool testing can be adopted. India has many advantages... one of them is biotech industry. I am not convinced that India cannot test more."
While answering a question from Prof. Giesecke on how India was balancing between disease and economy, Rahul said, “Well, we got a full lockdown and I am sceptical of a full lockdown myself. I do think that one has to move to a partial lockdown. I think the full lockdown is damaging and the damage increases exponentially. The sooner you get out of the lockdown, better it is.”
He also accepted the suggestion by Prof. Giescke that more may die due to severe lockdown than the disease. Prof. Giescke, who works with Karolinska Institute, Sweden, spoke about his country, where the lockdown is far more relaxed.
His interactions with both the experts were centred on the question of exit strategy to get out of the lockdown.
"Lockdown buys you time but it's not the goal unto itself. We have to use this time to create a fabulous infrastructure for testing and isolation and to convince people that life will be very different. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. A clear signal is sent to people - you tell them this is much more serious, potentially devastating than any other illness. If people are scared, they will not engage into economic activity. I haven't seen any country that has done this brilliantly," said Prof. Ashish Jha.
Prof. Jha agreed that while the lockdown helped in slowing down the spread of the virus, it could not be the goal unto itself. He also said that the government should communicate to the public and be candid about it. He said that the projections that the virus would slow down in next few months were wrong. Till a vaccine was found, which could take up to 18 months, life will more or less remain the same as it was under the lockdown.
Rahul said that during his interactions with the migrant labourers he understood that it was the uncertainty of what lay in the future that was frightening for them.
He and Prof. Jha spoke at length about testing. Rahul claimed that he had been told unofficially by bureaucrats that the reasons testing figures were low was because it would “frighten the people.”
One infected person can infect three others, Professor Jha said, stressing that the virus spreads faster in closed spaces than open areas. "This means that Indian joint families are more vulnerable," Rahul suggested.
"Coronavirus won't be the last pandemic to hit us. What's different now is globalisation. Most pandemics jump from animals to humans. Climate change is going to make this worse. With more people eating meat, the interaction with animals increases," Jha said in his concluding remarks.
"India would ruin its economy if it has a very severe lockdown," Prof. Giesecke said adding that Coronavirus, which is a "very mild disease", will affect "almost everyone in the world".
"The disease is very mild. Most people who have it don't even know it. While the old and vulnerable need to be protected from the disease, you may cause more deaths due to a severe lockdown than the illness," he added as Rahul spoke about the plight of the migrants.