TheUnCon

  T he COVID-19 pandemic changed us for good. Nobody thought much would come from being stuck with Netflix and the sheer abundance of time. And then, just like that, we turned to books when we were done scoring through all the OTT platforms at our disposal. It’s admirable how a global pandemic forced a hard stop to our fast-paced lives and made us sit down and read. I found a book during the pandemic that changed the way I live my life. Unlike my experience with most of the self-help books I have read, this book had me with a pencil and a notepad. I absorbed every word, phrase, and expression this book had to offer and can’t wait to bring it alive through this quick book review. I present to you Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian- American psychologist best known for his work on the “Flow state.” As the name suggests, a flow state is a state of free-flowing consciousness and a calm mental state. He describes the flow state as a state...

  Going Viral is a succinct account of India’s contribution toward vaccine development in the pandemic era. It is a detailed story of the combined efforts of the Government of India and premier research institutes around the country like the Indian Council of Medical Research   ICMR), National Institute of Virology (NIV), and others, in building the vaccine we are so proud of today. Dr. Balram Bhargava, the author of the book and director of ICMR, has taken enormous pride in writing this book as written documentation and proof of the struggles they went through as a team to create a historical vaccine – Covaxin. Through simple writing and detailed diagrams and images, Dr. Bhargava has tried to break down the nuances of the research that goes into making a vaccine and explain the process behind the scenes for a layman to understand. He has addressed various speculations that were raised regarding vaccine development with a background of scientific reasoning and lo...

INDIA'S JOURNEY IN DEVELOPING COVAXIN CHALLENGE FACED CONTEXT CHALLENGE DEFEATED Lack of health infrastructure Population of 1.3 billion Public and private sector models in India Public sector caters to financially needy   Private sector catered to those who could afford costs Aim of universal health coverage could not be met through the private sector alone   Impose a nationwide lockdown on 24 th March Restrictive measures to contain the spread of the virus Added time to ramp up resources Shortage of sufficient samples for ICMR and NIV to isolate and study virus Requirement of high-quality samples samples needed to have a high viral load Someone had to deliver them safely to the NIV lab 12 tourist samples arrived in New Delhi Genomic sequencing was conducted overnight Requirement of mass production of testing kits   First ...