Speakers at a webinar organised by Telangana Today pitch for multi-sectoral approach to improve present state of industries and influence behaviour of community

The narrative of the media on issues related to Covid-19 has ended up creating a fear psychosis among the public. Lockdowns are very expensive, and there are estimates that suggested that we lost Rs 18,000 crore per day during the lockdown while some even put the loss at close to Rs 30,000 crore. It impacted those at the bottom of the pyramid like street vendors, small traders and daily wagers. The key to understand Covid is to understand how the data is presented to us, which helps in determining the seriousness of the disease. A lot of people are talking about the death rate.

Compared to advanced countries, despite the poor hospital care and late detection due to low testing, the death rate in India is just 2.97 per cent. India bears 32 per cent global burden of respiratory diseases.

The global burden of disease study says that about 33.6 per cent could be attributed to ambient air pollution, 25.8 per cent to household air pollution and 21 per cent to smoking.

What could happen going forward?

All predictions show up to 300 million Indians will contract Covid-19

• Most will recover without hospitalisation
• Real panic is of hospital bed availability
• How to change the media and public narrative from ‘avoid Covid at all costs’ to ‘living with Covid’?
• How do we improve post-Covid communications?

Daily fatalities due to respiratory diseases are 2, 834 per day, which is 6.5 times Covid-19 deaths. Despite such a huge burden, we did not shut down India for pollution.