Coronavirus in a lesser governed state.

This is our next challenge. Maybe it already is here, just that we don't know of it for lack of testing kits and for a laissez faire approach in how we deal with issues even when we know better. We haven't mapped our most-at-risk segments of the population and not tested enough people to know the real spread and depth of how Pakistan may already be infected with coronavirus. We only know those who enter from the Taftan-Iran border and quarantine them in our special way. Among them, those that are responsible, or helpless, or persons of lesser means and influence, or cannot buy their way out, remain. Others simply manage out of even this sham detention. Of those who travel from China into Pakistan, or now call this country their second home, we do the perfunctory check only of their body temperature and in testimony of our eternal friendship outscaling both the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, we earn their kudos.

The health minister assures us that in the last month and a half - since we woke up to a disease which was killing people at random - we had had only 20 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. That beats the odds by the hugest margin going by theorems of exponential growth which is how the epidemic, now a pandemic, is spreading. There is this extremely well-elaborated narration of 'Exponential Growth and Epidemics' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tlxDvrg and feature=youtu.be) which by all counts, if true should have seen numbers multiply in 10s every few days. But we somehow are still lucky to be in a very selectively linear growth. And without any mitigating intervention from our side. This trumps science and mathematics, both.

The explanation in the video above talks of the inflection point when the exponential growth begins to taper off and then decline. It occurs on two counts: when all are infected with the virus and there is none left to add to the tally, or when remedial measures kick in to mitigate the spread through care, discipline, precaution, isolation and extreme hygiene in individual and collective lives which stem the tide and ultimately reduce it to zero. It's a mathematical model of an epidemic and its growth path is based on realistic data establishing a 15-20% increase daily from the previous day's numbers - compounding to excessively high rates qualifying it to the point of an epidemic. A rough calculation suggests that numbers of afflicted must increase in multiples of 10 over every 15 day period. Our official...