NEW DELHI – In the middle of a pandemic, if a cyclone comes hurtling toward you, what should you do? Debasis Shyamal, a fisherman, forgot about social distancing.
He crammed himself into a government shelter, minutes before Cyclone Amphan crashed into his coastal village in West Bengal on Wednesday hurling winds of up to 170 kilometers (105 miles) per hour.
He stayed awake in the dark, listening to the carnage outside. “No one was thinking about the virus. We were just trying to stay alive,” he said.
The cyclone has now dissipated. But the pandemic hasn’t. In the past 48 hours, the cyclone killed 77 people and the coronavirus nine in West Bengal, one of India’s poorer states.