I have survived many fights, both external and internal. I have been through plenty of ups and downs. I have failed and passed quite a few tests. But I have never come across anything like it. They have declared it a pandemic but many are suspicious. Doctors are dying, nurses are vulnerable, and protectors are unprotected. All precautions in the laboratories are insufficient. The plasma of the affected is more valuable than the normal blood. No place is safe and no one is immune. Homes, localities, towns, cities, countries, continents and from hilltops to oceans, the disease is omnipresent. It’s unseeable, unfeelable, inaudible, and unrecognizable. It has no taste and no color. It’s a killer among us that kills from within.
I have been trying to refrain from writing about COVID-19 but it has exponentially prolonged that it has become impossible to remain silent. You may regard this writing as my attempt to protest against this oppressor.
What can we do about it, how do we escape or evade it, where can we be safe? We are still in search of answers about this horrible invader. We hear hundreds of experts, obey government instructions, live in lockdown and observe curfews. We unwillingly stay away from our elders in their most needful days. We keep a safe distance and follow quarantine. We have closed schools, worship homes, malls, restaurants, cinemas, clubs, playing ground, parks and locked ourselves in homes. Yet it goes on proliferating, unstoppably.
We have heard and watched so many medical, religious, social and all kinds of sermons about it. Special recipes of homemade cures flood our social media. The talk show hosts exceeded their roles overnight turning into pundits on viral diseases. So-called doctors are even calling it a conspiracy, others are giving birth to strange theories of their own. UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects) enthusiasts suspect it to be an aliens’ intervention in earthly affairs.
In the meantime it continues to creep in closer and nearer to us; in our state, in our city and then in our street. After seeing it in our backyard, most of us now begin to treat it as a reality. It is real and it is here.
In the initial weeks, we dealt with it like sweepstakes holidays. We began to enjoy a calendar full of free days. Cook food of our tastes. Get glued to Netflix and HBO. Spend hours in our studies. Watch favorite matches that we have missed. Have great family time. As our intake of news, television, and social media increases, so does the anxiety. They say bad times do not come alone. With it arrived a flood of economic stress, unemployment and joblessness. The worst stricken are daily wagers and small business entrepreneurs, the business of rental income and the services industry.
Consequently, this pandemic has sprung threats at all levels and from different angles. It resembles menace to sinners and pious alike. The rich and the poor, white and black, young and aged, all are its victims.
I would like to request my self-proclaimed messiah friends to stop flooding our phones with herbal remedies. I want to inform them that the cure does not lie in fennel seeds or basil leaves like they broadcast on a daily basis.
Instead of wasting our time to look for solutions for the disease, we should leave that work to the professionals. I think we can stick to the protective protocol, enforce it in our surroundings and start to live an active life within the limitations of the new normal. We can encourage our neighbors and dear ones to strictly abide by the COVID-19 instructions at all costs for our joint welfare. We must learn to live with it while our scientific brethren are working hard to come up with a vaccine. We should do our part to keep society afloat as responsible residents. I don’t think we can do anything more than that. Here are few guidelines by CDC USA, more like that are available online.
USGA
Washington post
CDC.govt
Forbes.com
By
Ahsan Jamil
Golfer, entrepreneur, blogger, author, poet, wanderer
Email: golfaij@gmail.com
Website: golfaij.com