One village quelled Covid. The next was overrun. It's a bad sign for India

The uneven response to India's catastrophic second wave, coupled with widespread vaccine hesitancy, indicates that the coronavirus is here to stay.

When a devastating second wave of Covid-19 infections reached India’s countryside this spring, the village of Khilwai took immediate action. Two testing centers were set up, and 30 positive cases were isolated. The outbreak was contained with just three deaths.

It was a different story in the two villages on either side of Khilwai. Testing remained limited. The local health center in one village had been closed, its staff sent away to a larger hospital. The coronavirus spread, and at least 30 people in each village died with Covid-19 symptoms.

But even as the three villages in India’s most populous state, Uttar