Written during the first lockdown of 2020, this essay by Anulekha Kakaty sets the CoVID-19 pandemic alongside natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and cyclones, noting that India chose to treat the outbreak as a natural disaster under its disaster-management laws rather than the colonial Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897. It traces the history of coronaviruses from the 1960s through SARS (2002–03) and MERS (2012) to the 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, comparing case counts, fatality rates and basic reproduction numbers with those of seasonal influenza and measles. Natural disasters are shown to cause far larger death tolls, displacement, infectious-disease outbreaks and economic losses, while the pandemic's distinctive effects lie in isolation, social distancing, disproportionate harm to the poor, stress and xenophobia.
The author outlines containment and mitigation strategies (South Korea's mass testing, PPE, online workflows, hazard-reduction planning and adaptation examples from Pune, the Maldives, Samoa and South Africa) and presents local observations from Assam, including a small survey of gutkha sales in Kolabari village during the lockdown. The piece concludes that popularising science and scientific temper is the lasting answer to disasters and superstition alike, and that humanity must prepare through science and technology while protecting nature.
