Trigger Warning:** Mental health first. If you are feeling slightest of mental health related turbulence due to extended lockdown such as: anxiety, phobia, anger, melancholy or OCD, please do not proceed further. It is likely that it will aggravate your emotions and prove to be counter-productive. You can always come back to the article later. For those who choose to proceed further, please keep in mind, I do not have a crystal ball and like any other medium, I use the written word to communicate my concerns and opinions.

It has been more than three months now since the COVID-19 virus took over the entire world and especially India. Much has been said, written and discussed how the time we are living in is an unprecedented one. Unprecedented, because the virus caught us off-guard when we thought we were at the peak of our civilization.

To understand the condition in which we are right now, one should watch the first episode of the British television drama series Black Mirror. In this episode, the fictional Prime Minister Michael Callow faces a huge and shocking dilemma when Princess Susannah, a much-loved member of the Royal Family, is kidnapped. As a ransom, the kidnapper has asked him to do something so horrifying that he vows not to fulfil this ransom.

Upon hearing about the ransom, taken aback, PM Callow asks his advisors:

“So what now? What’s the playbook?”

“This is virgin territory, Prime Minister. There’s no playbook.”

Each of us including our state-heads, scientists and economists are Black Mirror’s Prime Minister Michael Callow. There is no playbook. Like him, we have no idea as to what to do with this, how to deal with it. We lack any experience of dealing with something like this on such a grand scale: the virus, the entire social-economic fabric, international economy, basically everything under the Sun. We cannot solve a quantum computational problem with knowledge of school-level mathematics. Reading so far sounds so much full of pessimism. In a way, yes. But, when my loved one will be lying alone on a deathbed in the hospital, I will know that the reality has knocked on my door.

What most of the countries have tried to do is: flatten the curve. We have seen enough of such graphs by now where it is hard to judge fact from fiction. What most of the people overlook is the meaning of the phrase-‘flatten the curve’. In its purest form, it means to inhibit the number of new infections (and that’s why deaths) due to COVID-19 at any given time so that the healthcare facility can better prepare themselves for the incoming volume of the patients. Taking one day at a time. So, we are trying to buy time, a simple bargain. Whether India has flattened the curve or not is of little interest to me because that requires a separate dedicated article on it. My interest lies in communicating and reiterating the naked truth: the truth that we are part of collateral damage. Yes, collateral damage in the war against COVID-19. As the government machinery is preparing to ease the restrictions in most parts of India, we need to make a decision. A decision whether we want to be collateral damage or not.

What exactly flattening the curve means?

Hamster in a wheel. A zero sum-up game.