Decoding no mask-no distancing’ public recklessness

Trisha Mukherjee
New Delhi Jul 14 (PTI): Why? As thousands crowd into markets, public places and holiday destinations seemingly without thought for the devastating second wave India is barely out of or the possibility of a third anytime, that is the question experts are pondering.
It’s a combination of apathy and a certain fatalistic attitude, said senior epidemiologist Lalit Kant. Attempting to decode the no mask-no social distancing’ recklessness underlining societal behaviour, psychiatrist Nimish Desai added that the public is unable to see the risks and correlate the restrictions on them. India, Desai said, has seen heavy trends of social irresponsibilit. Concerns have mounted after images on social and other media of snaking queues of cars waiting to enter hill stations and of people so anxious to get their lives back on track that basic precautions have been given the go by as they throng vacation spots and leisure sites.
In all cultures what should have happened is what is called risk perception how much does a society perceive the threat (to be) and how much does it modify its behaviour accordingly, Desai, director of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, told PTI. While the pandemic is primarily a health crisis, experts say the role of a society in controlling or fanning a contagion cannot be overlooked. The public in their conscious or unconscious minds could not see and correlate the restrictions on them , Desai said, referring to the peak of the first wave during the festive season last year.
Around the Diwali-Durga Puja season, people seemed to be over-compensating for the time they spent confined in their homes, he said. This unlock doesn’t seem very different. The seeming return to normalcy as India’s Covid numbers dip is comforting. But the scenes of people not adhering to basic Covid protocols are also alarmingly familiar that’s exactly what happened when the first wave was ebbing only to make way for a ferocious second one.