While the lockdown has caused a worldwide commotion and has left people with dread and fear, but sad enough, we have been apathetic about them.
by Anwar A. Khan
The world is reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, and some countries are reeling more than others. It’s like reality closer to imagination and imagination closer to reality. It is a biological attack. Panic and anxiety abounds. Our souls are weary from the strain of the life-altering unknowns. This outbreak is like a cruel slap in the face of human community.
Without a visa or legal documents, the Novel Corona Virus (Covid-19) has succeeded in crossing the borders of 220 countries affecting incredible number of individuals from various corners of the world, failing to discriminate people based on their status, wealth, age or citizenship leading to a global lockdown.
While the lockdown has caused a worldwide commotion and has left people with dread and fear, but sad enough, we have been apathetic about them.
All the management problems and human-rights issues that have been exposed make us sad and angry. For the first time, we have realised how important free speech is. This outbreak is like a cruel slap in the face of human community. It totally awakes us up and it makes us very sad.
In Illness as Metaphor, “Dying has come to be regarded in advanced industrial societies as a shameful, unnatural event, so that disease which is widely considered a synonym for death has come to seem shameful, something to deny.” Panicked, we insist that deadly diseases must be unnatural—and, since origin determines essence, their cause must be unnatural as well.
Indeed, unnaturalness has long been used to explain all forms of dysfunction. Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, the word serves as shorthand for moral deficiency: “unnatural and unkind,” “unworthy and unnatural,” “savage and unnatural,” “inhuman and unnatural.” In his time—and before it—an “unnatural” birth meant a baby born with some deformity; an “unnatural” death meant, and still means, life cut short by murder or accident. With regard to sexual activity, “unnatural” describes perversions of desire; in government, perversions of justice.
The central theme is consistent: man-made, not natural. Our faces show that we are devastated to see people dying. Our prayers for all these ill people everywhere. Especially Bangladesh right now.
Countries helping countries. People helping people. The world is in this fight together and must WIN.
A sad fact of life: in wars and in pandemics, given a large number of patients, doctors have to prioritise who gets treated first. This is so heart breaking…
My heart goes out too all the families, but sadness is turning too anger and my anger is slowly becoming rage. The people responsible for this must be punished; and this is not a natural virus...Praying for God's healing power, keep trusting.
In fact, why to go that far, people in the world do not need a virus to threaten their lives because even the air they breathe is a source of danger. What if this minuscule virus is trying to teach us what we have always been in denial of? That regardless of our gender, religion or ethnicity, we all belong to the same race and that is the race of humanity and what affects and weakens one human being, affects and weakens all of us.
What if this virus has come to teach us that it is possible to unite and coexist in peace? What if this virus is a lesson to expose us to a tiny bit of what people in the other part of the world go through and teach us that unless we become united and act like a single body, nothing can be solved and the humanity that we once believed in maybe doomed?
Perhaps this deadly virus is to shake us up from our routine slumber and give us a key insight on the daily sufferings of the people.
As human beings, we have almost achieved everything; we have reached what once was unreachable, we have cured what once was incurable, we have discovered the impossible but we have never learned to live together in peace. As human beings, we have the same basic needs; we drink the same water, eat the same food, breathe the same air and feel the same emotions, yet, we keep developing more differences among each other leading to nothing but more hatred and more prejudice that serves no one.
Amidst the ego, greed for wealth, intolerance and the past war resentments, we have forgotten that just like how in a human body each organ is crucial for the normal functioning regardless of its different shape and function, our world was made up of different countries with people belonging to different cultures, languages, and religions, each adding their own beauty and complementing each other.
The sad thing is that while to many countries, this virus is one of the major reasons for the ongoing fuss and tension, to many others this virus is nothing but another tool to show them how meaningless and worthless their lives are and this especially holds true to many of the poor countries with poor healthcare services and where many of the countries are currently witnessing the worst humanitarian crisis.
We must perhaps take this virus as a lesson and start working on achieving unity and peace because as John F. Kennedy once said, "mankind must put an end to war, before war puts an end to mankind’’. It is time to put all the past resentments aside and start living as a single heart, a heart that beats for a single cause and that is to bring peace and unity and strive to achieve equal rights for everyone, because every child is a child regardless of where he or she come from, every mother is a mother regardless of what religion she belongs to, because every human has the right to live and be fulfilled and what is the value of life when we cannot dream? What is the value of life when we are not even sure if we are going to make it for the next day? What is the value of life when we only exist because we have to? What is the value of life if we are merely a number?
One thing for sure is that if we succeed to put an end to this virus without putting an end to all the hatred and prejudice then I must say that the humanity that we once believed in is doomed and the real danger is us because I believe that this virus did not come to kill us but to wake us up and teach us the greatest of lessons and that is we are all together in this regardless of our background and unless we unite, nothing can be achieved.
Today, let us hope that we succeed in combatting this virus and ending with it every bit of hatred because as the saying by Seneca goes: “We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers of the same garden”, and that must always be in our mind.
We have realised that we are in the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time, important and needed.
No war could obtain what this pandemic has obtained: a desolate world, dominated by an unrelenting silence.
Thick darkness has gathered over us, our streets and our cities. It has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by. We feel it in the air. We notice in people's gestures. Their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost.
This difficult time has exposed society's vulnerabilities and false certainties. In this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about our image, has fallen away. We carried on unperturbed, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick.
Amid the storm and in front of suffering, where the true development of society is measured, one discovers the need to be united.
We have gone ahead at breakneck speed, feeling powerful and able to do anything. Greedy for profit, we let ourselves get caught up in things, and lured away by haste. We were not shaken by wars or injustice across the world, nor did we listen to the cry of the poor or of our ailing planet.
This scene will undoubtedly remain engraved in the memory of humanity. This is an extraordinary bad time for us.
We plead for protection of health. We plead for all to remain calm and kind, bravely face this great challenge unitedly.
Very heartbreaking, we understand that some people still have to work and have that necessity to be outside, but the rest of us, really have no excuse to be outside, other than the essential needs. Everyone is at risk, even if you think you are not, you can spread the virus to someone older from your family and you put their lives at risk for your irresponsibility. Be considerate. Stay inside. Stay safe. God bless Humanity. And God bless all who are in the front line fighting it.
Coronavirus is attacking world character, earth crying. The world is witnessing coronavirus and covid-19 out-break as a pandemic attack concept helplessly. We must not blank out that we all are one human community.
It is nothing, but a cruel slap in the face of human community by an inconspicuous brawny world power.
-The End –
The writer is an independent political observer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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