What is the role of an elected government during a pandemic?
Is its role to protect each life or make wide sweeping decisions for the greater good ? How much of such a decision making policy have to do with out cultural context ? Let's say, we as Indians have always been more skewed to the collective rather than the individual. So is the government also more skewed towards protecting the many rather than the individual ?
I'm going to make a disclaimer here and say that I have nothing for or against the current BJP government- both centre and state- in this particular topic.
My questions are about the vaccines we have and their approx 0.61/million chance of killing anyone who takes them. (Clots post vaccination ). This percentage seems to be still under debate, but we know that it is not zero. Some people, very few people, are developing clots and even fewer still - to the tune of 6 people out of 1 crore of those who take the vaccines are dying. And we are 140 crore people in this country. Even if we manage to vaccinate half the population we are talking about 400 odd people dying due to the vaccines.
So, in the interest of protecting a larger number of the population from dying, this is effectively government approved death of a smaller number of people. And we have to pay for the chance to die- the vaccines are not even free! for the 18-44 year old group.
Our government is not alone in making this hard decision of using an imperfect vaccine, several others have chosen to continue with the available vaccine - Astrazeneca or other easily available vaccine- than waiting for a perfect vaccine- which will not have the risk of death associated with it. Some European countries have halted the use of the clot-risk vaccine for the section of the population with highest risk of clot development. Some developing countries have also stopped the use of this vaccine. Is it because they are places where the individual good is more important than the collective good? Are those the places where every single life is important? Why is every single person's life not important in India? Is it because we have a lot of disposable population? Where if a few extra people die, it is thought to be okay?
This is a pandemic- and all solutions should be welcome. There is no perfect solution. There is no perfect vaccines. All vaccines come with some side effects. I agree with all these statements. So, we should use the vaccines we have. But can't the government restrict its use in the population group where the clots are occurring more and mortality is the result. Why can't they spend money and political effort to get a vaccine that doesn't kill people? Where deaths can be avoided, we should avoid them, no?
