THE SECOND WAVE IS ON THE HORIZON

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As I need to float around Panjim city (also now more aptly called Sodom and Gomorrah), when I attend my night calls in hospitals in town, my jaw just drops resignedly as I witness the sheer mayhem and madness playing out on Panjim streets in the dead of night.

It looks like the dam has well and truly burst.

Bikes zipping, tourists in a drunken ataxia, whores strutting, vehicles parked like heaps of dung, the acrid smell of smoke and drugs permeating the air (or perhaps it's the untreated sewage disgorged into the Mandovi), casinos packed and smiling with their "poker" faces.

Short, like really short skirts and ripped jeans; every corner of the city a repository of gin and vodka and whisky, masquerading as urine. 

Morals be damned folks, the morale  is so sky high that even the masks have taken a mandatory holiday.

It's a nightmare, soon to turn into a carnage on the streets of Panjim. 

I come home, pop a couple of Valiums and try to sleep the night away. 

To make matters worse, Jaidev Mody appears in my dreams singing plaintively the Frank Sinatra classic "My Way".

I told him "Bloody rubbish, the whole of Goa, is doing it Your Way".

And my friends (many of them the eternal optimists and political masochists from AAP) tell me this scene is being replayed across the tourist belt of Goa, with impunity. 

And that the likes of Michael Lobo and Babu Azgaonkar have frozen their faces in a permanent smile of sheer, delirious Joy.

They can't display any other emotion, so plastic surgeons have been flown in to fix the problem.

But, kidding apart, I get the argument that the economy needs to open up and jobs have to be kickstarted ASAP.

So of course, the restaurants and hotels, and yes even the casinos, need to open up.

But like freaking this??

In this violent, irresponsible, reckless, criminal way??

Is there no responsibility the industry takes to whip their own into some form of discipline??

Wow, the way we are going, the Trump MAGA idiots look like a bunch of boy scouts.

From the medical front, this now plays out like this.

1. Hospitals are bound to get overwhelmed again.

Resident doctors, nurses and medical attendants are at their complete wits’ end.

Remember it is not the consultants (yours truly included), who appear in the newspapers and TV channels, who save your lives.

It is the overstressed, overworked junior doctors and nurses who do.

And if they are not alert to a drop in oxygen or blood pressure at the critical times, you will die. End of argument.

And like human beings, who are being treated like migrant labour working in refugee camps, their alertness and zeal cannot last forever. 

Especially when you are hell bent on screwing yourselves. 

2. I repeat this again. Even if you have the good fortune to survive this little piece of crap, the residual damage, long-term, is devastating. 

And there is no established, effective treatment for that.

It's a gamble.  But then since we are the gambling capital of the country, hey isn't that great advertising??

3. The vaccines are here. The results are encouraging. Hope the final data comes quick. 

Once that efficacy is proven, hopefully there won't be naysayers who, for the sake of being naysayers, discourage and frighten people into NOT taking the vaccine.

We need this vaccine (the Moderna and Oxford look most promising for us, considering it is easily stored) to percolate to as many people as possible and quickly to get back to a semblance of normal life.

In sum then, the administration would be better placed in cracking the forceful whip on all establishments flouting safety protocols and hauling them over the coals.

And thanks to Adani, there is so much coal lying around Goa, no??

So instead of chasing and harassing activists trying to save the environment, get your batons down on all these criminals disobeying rules for profit,

welcoming the second wave with champagne and blackjack. 

Because, frankly the Corona virus is more like Russian Roulette.

You roll the magazine of your gun which contains just one bullet. 

And that bullet could well be for you.

Best of luck.

The orange guy lost, bigly.

Want to join him in losing the Corona war, because of our legendary, stupid hospitality??

The choice remains ours!!

*DR OSCAR REBELLO GOA

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