Life & death questions in the Covid pandemic

Economic revival in both rich and poor states is key to preventing more deaths

Haruki Murakami observed in Norwegian Wood in 1987 in a philosophical vein, “Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it.” Indeed, but it has become more so with the corona pandemic. More importantly, however, TV images of corpses covered in white sheets with patients on either side in public hospitals are heart-wrenching. Long queues at cremation grounds becoming longer by the day, with many not able to afford the escalating costs of cremation abandoning the dead at these places, are deeply disturbing too. As the pandemic continues to surge, such images and worse will proliferate