Sadly, as one can see from all the media coverage concerning India, things here are declining rapidly in our neck of the woods. Nepal often follows India as its shadow of sorts, and concerning Covid-19’s second wave regionally, it appears to be much the same.
Daily Nepal breaks new records. India sets new global records now regularly. The concern is more mutated strains that will circumvent current vaccines. We have no chance of getting vaccines simultaneously, albeit hope rises as a new single-dose vaccine emerging from Germany with the same technology as Pfizer.
This news just in:
There’s been an outbreak of the virus near my wife’s village. We are glad we did not go this time for the lockdown. They have very little health care there. One 22-year-old young man is on a ventilator, and they tested 18 people yesterday as a result. The results today were 14 are positive. Today, they have tested an additional 70. We will not know the results until tomorrow. No one was even aware the virus had come. Nepal, in the first wave, had only 35 deaths per day at its height. Today we had 139 for the tiny Himalayan nation. It is even at base camp on Mt. Everest. They are trying to get the people out of there while also airlifting empty O2 cylinders used in climbing to fight the pandemic. Flights are coming from China to being in more O2.
Many went for safety in the remote rural mountain village, thinking they could hide from the virus where there are very few amenities. They often do not bother with masks or with safe social distancing as they feel they are impervious in their “fortress of solitude.” Sadly, they were mistaken and unbeknownst anyone spreading it. No one has been tested in my wife’s village as of yet. They live off the land. The work is hard, and so masks are not always deemed viable or available in their practices. They work together and often go from house to house so easily. They are communal in almost all aspects of life, especially in their funerals.
Few have been vaccinated, which Fauci has deemed as the only way out of the pandemic for India. Nepal’s rate is worse than India when one considers the percentage of the population and the virus’s current rate of its spread here. While the hospitals in the valley/capital remain overloaded and are turning away patients with shortages of O2, we still have access to medicines at the local pharmacy. They have next to nothing there. We are glad we remained here as we were led, but we are saddened for many loved ones who reside there or sought safety there only to end up in the “eye of the storm.”
