The secrecy in different parts of the world over the pandemic, not the least in India, can be intrinsically wrong and counter-productive. Moving out the principal secretaries helming the health deparment, as in West Bengal and now Odisha, for being forthright with the truth can only reinforce the dominant impression that harsh facts are sought to be airbrushed by respective governments.

In the battle against Covid-19, transparency about the facts is the key to maintaining public support. Bereft of transparency, any government runs the risk of undermining its own credibility. Notably in China where there was a crackdown on at least one whistleblower and where the likes of President Xi Jinping have been less than explicit on the origins of coronavirus, let alone its global spread from Wuhan.

In a bout of self-criticism, rightly has the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, remarked that “British governments have never been at ease with openness, and this continuing unease is now significantly affecting and weakening the national effort”.

Openness, one would imagine, is the bedrock of the fountain-head of democracy. To the extent that the casualty toll in America might exceed one lakh, Donald Trump might have been fairly forthright. But there is no indication yet of the why and wherefore of the frightful escalation across the largest democracy.

Blacked out information is said to be the thread that binds the official documents. The short point must be that these documents don’t have to be akin to the top secret Cold War papers. No one denies that the catastrophe has been more devastating than the Second World War.

Yet there is a huge difference between a war and a pandemic. In a real war there is a human enemy. In the case of a pandemic, there is a viral enemy. Humanity confronted humanity during 1914-18 and 1939- 45; in a pandemic, what doctors call the viral enemy is invisible.

And the difference must be crucial when it comes to mobilising public support. In a war, the enemy seeks vital information. Small wonder why the national effort must of necessity be ruthlessly confidential. Strategies and plans have to be concealed and information controlled. At another remove, openness must be at the core of the fight to preserve national health.

Transparency is fundamental to good decision-making about an elusive enemy. It is also vital to ensuring national confidence, so that the public cooperates with evidence-based restrictions and sacrifices ~ including control over their own data ~ that can help bring the viral scourge to an end. Coronavirus remains ever so foggy.

Serial lockdowns can only heighten interest and deepen suspicion over the health of a fellow human being. Hence perhaps the alleged manipulation of death certificates in Kolkata. Documents on corona must theoretically be the benchmark of credibility.

The people need to know that governments everywhere are on the right track. Specifically, to forestall the loss of trust when the world has been jolted to its foundations.