I Can’t Breathe: In India, in the USA, or Anywhere Else, Transform the Oppressive System that Is Choking

Derek Chauvin found guilty on all three charges for killing George Floyd’ read the news item published on 21 April 2021. The verdict was pronounced eleven months after the video emerged that showed Chauvin kneeling on the neck and back of a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd, handcuffed and lying prone on the street, for 9 minutes 29 seconds on 25 May 2020. Floyd was gasping for breath while repeatedly exclaiming `I can’t breathe’ and ultimately he died. Back home in India, Shankar Lal Srinivas, age 42 years, succumbed to COVID-19, experienced breathing trouble. His father took him to the hospital but he died gasping as he waited for the oxygen and a bed in Durg, Chhattisgarh. His father claimed that his life could be saved if the doctors could have attended to him. The crumpled system took his life.G, a 60-year-old woman in a hospital in Nagpur on April 16, 2021, is found COVID positive. Her oxygen level plummeted to 80 at around 2.30 pm but she was forced to share her bed and oxygen supply with two other patients, which implies that she gets only one-third of the oxygen she required as the hospital continued to remain overstretched. By evening, her oxygen level further dropped to 60-70 and still, she could get only one-third of the supply. Her son who could not bear to stand this trauma anymore somehow could manage to procure a jumbo medical cylinder, but just as he rushed to the hospital, his mother stopped breathing. Kanwaljeet Singh a 58-year-old died on 16 April 2021 in an ambulance while being ferried from one hospital to another as he could not find a bed in any hospital. He was a resident of Kanpur. His son Niranjan Pal Singh told, “I believe if he had received treatment on time, he could have lived. But no one helped us, the police, the health authorities or the government”. Vinay Srivastava, 65-year-old, is a journalist. He died in his home in Lucknow gasping for breath. His last tweet was “My oxygen is 31 when some(one) will help me?” addressing the chief minister of UP as he was unable to find a bed or a doctor. A retired judge Ramesh Chandra, aged 69, requested the authorities to remove his wife’s body from his home. He shared, “My wife and I are both corona positive. Since yesterday morning, I called the government helpline numbers at least 50 times, but no one came to deliver any medicine or take us to the hospital. Because of administration’s laxity, my wife died this morning”. Deepti Mistri, 22-year-old, a mother, in Lucknow who has no pre-existing health conditions, fell ill while her uncle desperately tried to find a hospital bed when two days later her oxygen level dropped dangerously below 50 percent. A dozen of government or private hospitals refused to admit her. Eventually on 16 April 2021, her uncle could find a small six-bed private clinic that took her for a night, gave her oxygen, and discharged her at 5 am. She died within hours after reaching her home because she could not get oxygen and hospital care. Many similar harrowing stories are emerging were during the second fatal wave of COVID-19 in India, people are suffering because of non-availability of oxygen, shortage of ventilators, shortage of beds and medicine. Several states such as Delhi and Maharashtra have declared an `oxygen emergency’ and have been pushing the central government to arrange the supplies quickly. The social media feed is full with videos of hospitals full of patients, sick people lying on the ground in the parking lot, wailing families, long queues of ambulances where patients are gasping for their lives while the patient’s attendants struggling to arrange beds, treatment, medicine, plasma and oxygen and of funerals in the crowded crematoriums. Meanwhile, it is alleged that the government is playing politics.COVID-19 has exposed the illness that plague the system for decades. More than the natural cause, it is the man-made reasons that are causing devastation. The neglect to properly implement prevention and cure of the disease occur because of the weaknesses inherent within the system ranging from the nonavailability of the infrastructure, the omissions at various levels, to the unwillingness of the political masters to respond actively to the pandemic or to protect the health interest of the population. The situation therefore is that the health system, itself is, seemingly on the ventilators and is gasping for life. Consequently, it is the common people who are being compelled to pay a high price including their lives. In the USA, the jury verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin has seemingly revived the faith in the democratic process though the life of George Floyd is lost. But the question that remains is that how will India be able to overcome the deadly wave of the coronavirus that is causing much loss and trauma. The tattered health system is affecting the lives of millions across the country. Is there any way to revive and recover from this fatal situation?