Living life in a pandemic without electricity

Today is 6th June 2020 and it seems everything has taken a turn for the worst. 

Let me recap, 

There is a pandemic situation due to a coronavirus infection which possibly originated from bats or pangolins since apparently in China people eat raw animals and there was a zoonotic transmission to humans and it was hidden from the world which then blew out of proportion. 

As of today, there are 6,774,598 infections with 395,603 deaths.

India is at 236,060 infections and 6649 deaths. India went into total lockdown on about 16 -24 March 2020 and she's still slowly opening as of today. Even the rest of the world is under a lockdown with each country deciding whether to open and to open at what level. This means no foreign travel which obviously impacts one of my life decisions.

As a bio technologist by education,  I can understand the severity of this situation but watching people question lockdown, trying to become contrarian or rogue by purposefully going against directives honestly baffles me. Humans are going to be extinct because of stupidity of humans, not because of leaps in technology but because some idiots cannot follow simple rules.

As a Clinical researcher by profession, I understand the timeline of vaccine development is long and it may take years before we have a viable vaccine and then it will take months till production and supply will be enough to vaccinate the rest of the living world who are not infected or not dead.

The lock down is still in effect which means I have to stay home and I have..I haven't got out of my building since 17th March 2020. That's about two and half months now.

The cyclone, 3 days back on 3rd June took out the power grid here, so no power. It was fine on day 1, we restricted the usage of lights and fans only at night on the power backup. No laptops or TV and even less phone usage.

Day 2 we lost water, since apparently nowadays everything depends on power. No electricity means no way to pump the water up the building water tanks. Which means you have to conserve water and use it as a resource from your backup. Fine.

Today is day 3 and the power backup is now over. Which means no ceiling fan can operate which means no proper sleep since they humidity is off the charts here. No way to charge phones. I have a 20000 mah battery which can charge my phone about 4 times.

The electricity department is unsure when the power will be restored in my area, which apparently is the capital of the district. I cannot imagine the state of other towns and villages in the district, when the capital is not yet restored.

I have decided to move to the city if the power is not restored in the next two days, which means taking immense risk of travelling to the heavily coronavirus (covid19) impacted areas. I need to check into work since I am already on an exigency leave since last 3 days.

Honestly, I am sad at the state of affairs of the state government. The disaster recovery force came into action and evacuated people and cleared the national highways which is appreciated. 

But how come noone takes into consideration of the infrastructure damage before it happens. Since it was extremely obvious power is going to be impacted. In certain areas the electricity department is telling people that power will not be restored in next 15 days since they dont have the supplies like wires and poles.

Buildings and houses, I agree cannot be restored in a few days. But atleast power should be. They are declaring the support package of 100 crores now after the events. Electricity is one of the basic requirements since everything depends on it.

Food, cause without it now refrigeration has failed and its risky to venture out in a pandemic everyday to get food.

Water, since pumps no longer work so water is not available to buildings.

Medicines, which I noticed since my grandmother has no insulin available as it needs to be refrigerated. So after 3 days the insulin stored at house maybe ruined and same with medical stores.

No ATMs in the area. And you need cash cause by day 3 most shops no longer have card readers working as they have no bloody power.

Some fuel pumps are closed. I guess they don't want to spend fuel for their generators.

I and like me many others in my area are working from homes and we can no longer do that. Atleast the section who could work and keep companies running when others are shut down due to pandemic , is shut down as well.

Basically, slowly everyone is coming down to a halt. People are having dinner by 7 PM since they can no longer do anything at night. Feels like the 60s.

Well, I was stuck at home in a pandemic and it is fine, but now without electricity and water my patience is waning with each passing day. NO more computers, TV and probably after two more days I may not be able to use a phone, so no more communication.