#Thread
CONTENT WARNING: Death and Corona

My dad died from COVID. As I piece together the events leading upto it, the hardest part to come to terms with is the major role widespread scientific illiteracy played in his death and continues to play afterwards.

In the middle of pandemic, his friends threw a marriage anniversary party for another friend. Three people from that party, including my father, were diagnosed Corona positive.

No friends regret it. They continue to flout the precautions with very eloquent justifications like - It's all destiny. If I'm meant to die, no matter how hard I try, I'll die.

and

Jo darr gaya so marr gaya.

(Coz Sholay and rhymes capture the complete reality)

It's not that he wasn't interested in preventive care, he was. He was taking the homeopathic 'remedy' Arsenic Album. That kept him under impression that he was immune to COVID.

He and the rest of the family truly believed that 22nd March was an astrologically significant day and clapping for 5 minutes at 5 PM would create a universal vibration so potent that it would obliterate Corona.

He seemed to be open to every idea except the modern medical consensus. His distrust for modern medicine was partly fuelled by the malpractices by hospitals.

One of which was registering the cause of his death as Cardiac Arrest and not Covid, on relatives' request. Which is apparently a common malpractice in these times. So, please do be skeptical of death figures.

The justification by my relatives for not reporting COVID was that it would've led to electric cremation, which would've been a blasphemy and not given peace to his soul. So, the crematorium staff was kept in dark my dad's condition and about the people exposed to him...

... who cremated him without any regard for social distancing. (I couldn't cremate because I was in a different city and hurrying to catch a flight to home. I consented assuming the cremation was following all protocols.) When I raised the objections...

... I was told nobody can follow the precautions and that's how the world works.

Every single of the relatives mentioned, including my father, is literate. That seems to make them think they're immune flawed/unscientific ideas.

As angry I am on this, I still harbor no ill-will. I believe they're doing this out of good intentions.

It's just that critical thinking, the skill to reasonably sift between information and misinformation, is not a part of the larger conversation or education, yet.

I'm happy at least Kerala has taken a step forward in that regard. I hope some day, rest of the populace also catches up.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.