If there is one phrase that no one wants to hear or experience today, it is this—“I can’t breathe.” In the current context, these three words may suggest the onset of a potentially serious phase of the COVID-19 infection. It sets into motion a rapid trail of activity ranging from simple oxygen supplementation to complex intensive care for the affected person and an ocean of anxiety for the near and dear. Today, there are thousands in this predicament, hospitalised throughout the country.
Bystanders wait with bated breath, hoping for recovery. “I can’t breathe” has earned public attention because of its dramatic presentation in pandemic proportions. It indicates the failure of life-sustaining oxygen to reach the blood due to the inability of the air-lung interface to absorb the same. Left unattended, life starts slipping away within a matter of minutes. This fatal sequence has conferred the Covid-19 infection the status of a killer disease and induced panic in the public mind.
“I can’t breathe” were also the last few words uttered by George Floyd under the crushing weight of a policeman’s knees on his neck, disrupting blood and gas to his lungs. His mumbled words and death have reverberated across the globe as a metaphor for police brutality and racial discrimination. Closer home recently, in Tuticorin, these would have been the same words leaving the lips of the two who were beaten to their deaths in custody. In all these examples, “I can’t breathe” seems to be the common refrain for physical and social suffocation.
“I can’t breathe” is not exclusive to the pandemic. It existed in a subdued form even before. Better expressed as “we can’t breathe”, it represents the unsaid lament of people who would inhale the heavily contaminated air of our metros. Polluted enough to leave a blurry haze till the late hours of the morning. Contaminated enough to smudge your white shirts grey. The rising air quality index made our cities difficult to breathe in. Despite the increasing number of children presenting with acute breathlessness to paediatric emergencies, the problem was never dramatic enough to attract action on a war-footing.
“We can’t breathe” represents a systemic decline in the quality of free air, for which gas-guzzling vehicles and smoke-producing industries must be held accountable. Paradoxically, the Covid epidemic seems to have come to the rescue of city-dwellers, evidenced by the plummeting air quality index values during the lockdown. Not for long, as we hear of vehicle manufacturers planning to ramp up their production to thousands of vehicles per day. There is scant regard for the respiratory health of citizens when it comes to boosting the key drivers of the economy.
“We can’t breathe” must be a slogan for the government to demand accountability from smoke producers to compensate for the irretrievable damage done to many lungs and lives. Another strange paradox that exists is that masks and visors meant to mitigate the risks can themselves be the reason for an occasional person to run out of breath. If masks were to become permanent fixtures to our faces, many will say “I can’t breathe” out loud.
To cut a long story short, we are confronting a problem of breathing difficulties, the solutions to which are equally debilitating in the long run. Mask-induced pathology, ranging from breathlessness to cosmetic facial scars, are bound to happen. The entire platform of facial recognition and identification stands challenged. The mask is likely to provide safe cover to miscreants looking for small-time mischief in all walks of life. All things considered, surely we are suffocated from all sides, aren’t we? We can’t breathe.
Finally, “I can’t breathe” may have a larger figurative meaning against the backdrop of an ever-expanding register of do’s and don’ts. To go out, you need a mask; to sneeze, your elbow; to touch something, you need a sanitiser; to travel, you need an e-pass; to buy something, you stand six feet apart; in your workplace, you may need a visor; you cannot party at home or eat out. When all these small joys of unrestricted life mutate into the lowered new normal post-Covid, many of us will complain about the social suffocation that this new normal will bring. Till then, let us take slow deep breaths.
Dr Sunil Chandy
Former Director, CMC Vellore, and Medical Director, ITC Healthcare Project, New Delhi
(sunilchandycmc@gmail.com)