A STUDY ON PEOPLE’s CARELESSNESS IN PANDEMIC

Introduction
 Emergence of Corona Virus and Global Pandemic:
A novel coronavirus (CoV) is a new strain of coronavirus. The disease caused by the novel
coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China, has been named coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) – ‘CO’ stands for corona, ‘VI’ for virus, and ‘D’ for disease.
Formerly, this disease was referred to as ‘2019 novel coronavirus’ or ‘2019-nCoV.’The
COVID-19 virus is a new virus linked to the same family of viruses as severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) and some types of common cold.

The first cases of COVID-19 in India were reported on 30 January 2020 in three towns
of Kerala, among three Indian medical students who had returned from Wuhan, the epicentres
of the pandemic. Lockdowns were announced in Kerala on 23 March, and in the rest of the
country on 25 March. A second wave beginning in March 2021 was much more devastating
than the first, with shortages of vaccines, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and other medical
supplies in parts of the country.
 How this pandemic hit the life of common people can be seen by the rising cases since its
inception in India:

 Major factor responsible for the spread:

 Hiding travel history: People did not reveal their travel history even after symptoms, which
misleads the health care provider and exposes them to the susceptibility of infection.
Further, affected individuals are careless in taking preventive and control measures and they
do not restrict their travel, socialization, which further increases the chances of transmission
of the infection.

 Emerging racial attacks: The incidence of expressing frustration and discrimination against
individuals having a Mongoloid appearance are of concern since this only leads to a
division and not a combined effort in putting the war against COVID-19 spread
wholeheartedly by every citizen of India.

 Mixing Moving and Travelling: People letting their guards down became a major factor in
the spread, most of them were attending events, functions, mixing with each other even after
 government restrictions. Travelling and migration of the lower working class and rural areas
people also led to big cause for the spread.
 Fast-moving variants: The virus that causes COVID-19 is constantly changing, and new
variants of the virus started spreading in various regions of country. Sometimes new variants
emerge and disappear. Other times, new variants persist. Variants like Delta that lead to the
second wave was much more severe than the previous ones.

 Role of Carelessness and How to Address it: There is need to guard against carelessness in the
fight against COVID-19 and people. Carelessness has slowly crept inside people's mentality
regarding COVID-19 which has lead to such a serious surge of infection rates and deaths.  It
was very unfortunate to see people were not following the health safety norms set by experts to
fight against the pandemic. Carelessness played a major role in the unstoppable spread of
Coronavirus and we tried to address the problems faced by the public and what could have been
there appropriate solutions.

Objective
1. Identifying the problems
2. Understanding why people in India were so careless
3. Studying behaviour of people
4. How we can overcome
5. What measures can be adopted
6. Preparing for contingencies 
7. Research methodology

Identifying the problems

The pandemic has changed everything like the way we tarvel, work and consume. The main
problem is, there is no effective way to stop the spreading of the virus aand when people are
reluctant about taking any measures, it keeps on spreading at a higher rate. We need to
understand with the changing times we need to change our habits as well. People have still
not instilled Covid Precautions in their normal course of life. And the misinformation
campaign (China and local political parties) and World over Vaccine Hesitancy have given
the Covid a time to mutate and stay for a much longer peiod of time.

Understanding why people in India were so careless

Millennials invent a word for every recent phenomenon. For instance, individuals who ignore
government instructions of staying at home and practicing social distancing to curb
Coronavirus or people who have hoarded food, thereby causing food shortage across the
world, have been called 'covidiots' by the netizens.

Psychologists and sociologists claim several factors are responsible for such cavalier
behaviour, which shows an utter disregard towards public health safety, and a complete lack
of social responsibility. According to them, some factors that make people act in such a
careless manner are social conditioning, lack of faith in the healthcare system, botched-up
messaging from the government about COVID-19, lack of historicity, and the absence of a
scientific approach.

Studying behaviour of people

Here, we lay out the importance of understanding the psychology of human behaviour during
a pandemic, and how this can contribute to effectively managing the outbreak.

People respond in one of two ways when faced with the threat of an epidemic.

Firstly the “monitors”, these are those persons who seek out as much information as possible
about the illness. They stick to government recommendations, albeit at the expense of
heightened anxiety. Secondly, the “blunters”, they tend to tune out all information about the
epidemic, in order to reduce the associated anxiety, but as a result, are ill-informed about
responsible individual behaviour.

Most individuals use a combination of the two coping styles in varying proportions.
Promoting a middle-of-the-road approach between these two styles is recommended, to
minimize illness spread in the community.
How we can overcome

The most important factor in preventing the spread of the Virus and to overcome the
consequences is to empower the citizens with the right information and taking precautions.

Also some steps or measures that can be adopted foe the welfare of the population shall
include in order to overcome the effects of the pandemic are as follows:

 Make wearing a mask a normal part of being around other people. The appropriate
use, storage and cleaning or disposal are essential to make masks as effective as
possible.

 Avoid mass gatherings until entire population is vaccinated such as gatherings in

rally’s religious gatherings etc.
 Spreading awareness to get vaccinated must be a prior objective and vaccine
certificates shall be declared as mandatory to enter public places.
 The Central Government , State Government and all the healthcare authorities should
work together to adapt and restart immunisation services, rebuild community trust and
catch up those who have been missed both before and during the pandemic, while also
investing in strengthening immunisation systems to be more resilient and responsive
to the communities they serve.

What measures can be adopted

Social distancing is advised, particularly in locations that have community transmission.

Many countries have installed quarantine and social/physical distancing as measures to
prevent the further spread of the virus.

These measures can include:

· The full or partial closure of educational institutions and workplaces,

· Limiting the number of visitors and limiting the contact between the residents of confined
settings, such as long-term care facilities and prisons,
· Cancellation, prohibition and restriction of mass gatherings and smaller meetings,

· Mandatory quarantine of buildings or residential areas,

· Internal or external border closures, and

· Stay-at-home restrictions for entire regions or countries.

Personal protective equipment

For people without respiratory symptoms, the WHO does not recommend wearing a medical
mask in the community, since it does not decrease the importance of other general measures
to prevent infection. The single use of a mask does not obstruct the disease; the improper use
of the mask actually increases the risk of COVID-19 infection. In the WHO’s “Advice on the
use of masks in the context of COVID-19” interim guidance, the prioritized use of medical
masks by health personnel was emphasized

Social distancing

Social distancing is designed to reduce interactions between people in a broader community,

in which individuals may be infectious but have not yet been identified hence not yet isolated
[7]. As diseases transmitted by respiratory droplets require a certain proximity of people,
social distancing of persons will reduce transmission. Social distancing is particularly useful
in settings where community transmission is believed to have occurred, but where the
linkages between cases is unclear, and where restrictions placed only on persons known to
have been exposed is considered insufficient to prevent further transmission.

Quarantine

Quarantine is one of the oldest and most effective tools of controlling communicable disease
outbreaks. This public health practice was used widely in fourteenth century Italy, when ships
arriving at the Venice port from plague-infected ports had to anchor and wait for 40 days (in
Italian: quaranta for 40) before disembarking their surviving passengers.

6. Preparing for contingencies  - ( Anurag )

Research methodology
Enunciating the problem

Formulating a Hypothesis

Collecting the facts or data

Analyzing the facts

Reaching a Conclusion

Solutions to the issue

The initial step in our approach was to determine the causes and define the problem more
clearly. According to this approach, we formulated a hypothesis on basis of certain
observations which were done by our group members. The reasons for doing this was to
understand the human behavior exhibited in India. For this purpose, secondary data was used.

Going forward we collected the data on basis of

1. Geographical locations in terms of most of the states in the country.

2. Time frame when the country was experiencing the “First, Second and Third wave”
of Covid-19.
3. The intensity of Covid-19 across the nation (and how this affected the general
population).

We further distributed the data in the following manner

- Awareness of the precautions to be followed.

- Testing Centers in rural and urban areas.
- Availability of Covid-19 Testing kits.
 - The accuracy of the testing of covid-19 over time.
- Availability of hospital beds.

On the basis of all the data collected, the research and the discussions, we as a team analyzed
how individuals perceived this pandemic and we were able formulate the respective
conclusions.