Best of BS Opinion: Manpower shortage, Biden’s plans, exit polls, and more

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Now that the worldwide coverage of India’s crisis over oxygen, ICU beds and medicine is concentrating minds in officialdom, public health and medical planners would do well to anticipate the next big steps in managing the Covid-19 crisis, both for this second wave and the third wave that will follow almost inevitably. The principal crisis going forward will be the shortage of medical professionals.

How can this be addressed? Cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty made some sensible suggestions at a recent webinar about mobilising trained nursing and medical students waiting for their exams and incentivising them to work in Covid-19 units for at least a year. The broad numbers suggest that this is a simple and do-able way forward, says the top edit here.

This sort of forward planning would go some way towards deflecting public anger towards government inaction in this second wave. As Shyamal Majumdar points out here, the oxygen crisis shows how little the government has done, and how it wasted the nearly five-month lull in the public health emergency, from mid-September to mid-February.

In other views today:

Atanu Biswas examines recent history to discover why exit polls have lost their glamour and credibility as accurate indicators of electoral outcomes. Read it here

The second edit assesses US president Joe Biden’s first 100 days, which have demonstrated the virtues of a steady hand. Read it here

Quote for the day

"You try to do what you can to help but it's like a shot glass trying to bail out the Titanic"

Pia Desai, who runs a PR firm, on the Covid-19 crisis in India

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