Emerging New Perspectives on Epidemiology

The Covid-19 outbreak has while opened a new front of challenges for the humanity, it has created opportunities to chart new paths and venture into new territories of knowledge and investigation. It’s an opportunity to decimate the fictional boundaries created by patriarchal men between the different subjects on one hand while propagating the Islamic epidemiology championed by Tablighi Jamaat on the other hand. Liberals, who have not studied science beyond their secondary school examination are finding such novel use of ventilators while are showing the path to intensivists who wasted their life in medical school.

The first amongst equals, however, is the Islamic epidemiology. While the ignorant Kafirs are often in denial of Islamic epidemiology to contain the outbreak of a pandemic, the believers recognize the global nature of pandemic and take actions accordingly. If Tablighi Jamaat gathering had to happen in Delhi in middle of a pandemic, it must have been a global affair in accordance with Islamic epidemiology by inviting foreign nationals to attend the event. Any such efforts are not easy when the theocratic Indian state has taken away their rights to congregate and pray, which has been granted to them by Allah. It became ominous when the threat of government hounding Muslims under NRC exercise became a reality as government started tracking the believers forcefully when they had merely congregated in Delhi.

One of the foundational principles of Islamic Epidemiology is based on the principle of self sacrifice. If they’re a minority in a kafir majority nation, such act of self sacrifice by deliberately getting infected to infect others is a definite way of achieving the goal of Dar-Ul-Islam. Be it whether a virus or non-living entity, everything has been created by Allah for augmenting the means of achieving the end goal. Things became extremely gory and discriminatory when Muslims under quarantine were demonized merely for spitting and asking their legitimate demands from Kafirs. There was no empathy nor any attempt to understand the reason of their act of spitting. Spitting is a highly metaphorical act which is used to protest against an unjust system and the state which has recently implemented CAA definitely deserves to be at the receiving end of such metaphorical act.

The next emerging branch of Epidemiology which complements Islamic Epidemiology is Feminist Epidemiology. While the currently existing field of Epidemiology focuses on insignificant things such as finding the mechanical methods to contain the outbreak, medicines, vaccines etc. to alleviate the crisis, feminist Epidemiology seeks to understand the root cause of the issue. It’s no surprise that the patriarchal structure was again a culprit. The origin, transmission and impact of the virus have been highly patriarchal in nature as the spread of the virus was exclusively via air travel which is the highest form of patriarchal technology. The technology of air travel is rooted in the toxic masculinity of men who seek dominance over sky after dominating the entire land. The measures taken to contain the spread of the virus by locking down women inside their house remind women of their horrific past when they were denied to venture out of their house.

The outbreak of pandemic has been the excuse to let every feminist principle be at bay at the cost of patriarchal science. The norms of social distancing is a modified form of discrimination practiced against mensturating women, and classification of commodities into essential and non-essential during the lockdown doesn’t take cognizance of the gendered requirements. There are no talks about gender diversity of doctors and researchers who are out there as the reason why we haven’t been successful in finding the cure can be attributed to lack of gender diversity in STEM resulting in only one form of male perspective devoid of any connect with nature. The right to have their own pronouns, second most important win for them after the right to vote in US, not being followed in official communication is a serious act of microaggresion and denial of individual liberty to women. Safe spaces have become a relic of past and women can’t freely express themselves inside their home during lockdown due to consistently being subjected to male gaze.

These two novel streams of epidemiology find their most able comrade in the form of Liberal Epidemiology. Liberal Epidemiology is based on the principle of procurement of more and more numbers of ventilators. Never mind if they haven’t seen a ventilator in their lives and believe that ventilators are like refrigerators that you plug in and switch it on and wonder starts. When someone reminded them of not having sufficient manpower to operate ventilators even if additional ventilators are procured, they suggested shifting medical science from science to social sciences and they’ll be able to take care of it. Since no subject in social science requires years of efforts, they believe a certificate course of couple of weeks will be adequate provided operation of ventilators comes under the aegis of social sciences. Challenges always open the new path of progress, and extraordinary challenges open many such paths. This time, Islamic, Feminist and Liberal Epidemiology take the honors home.