MICROSCOPIC ENEMY
When we were preparing ourselves for World War 3, ok not world war 3, but we were almost sure that the USA will nuke North Korea or the vice-versa. And this could turn the world into a battleground and amid all these thoughts of the doomsday, Coronavirus came out of the syllabus and here we are — Q-U-A-R-A-N-T-I-N-E-D. (even words are practising distancing 😉).
We are in a “good time” to be facing this Microscopic Enemy. Think if this epidemic had spread 200 or 300 years ago, this too would have been labelled as the scourge of God on us humans. Historian and anthropologist Yuval Noah Harari very aptly wrote in his bestseller book Homo Deus that “while we cannot be certain that some new Ebola outbreak or an unknown flu strain won’t sweep across the globe and kill millions, we will not regard it as an inevitable natural calamity. Rather, we will see it as an inexcusable human failure and demand the heads of those responsible. … humankind has the knowledge and tools to prevent plagues, and if an epidemic nevertheless gets out of control, it is due to human incompetence rather than divine anger.”
Ok, so what is this COVID-19?
According to WHO the novel coronavirus (CoV) is a new strain of coronavirus. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. Most people infected with the COVID-19 virus will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment. Older people and those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious illness. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan, China.
The COVID-19 virus is a new virus linked to the same family of viruses as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and some types of the common cold.
There were a lot of videos circulating on social media and chatting platforms like Whatsapp, claiming that China might have developed Corona Virus as a “Biological Weapon” to destabilize the world order and come out of this as a world hegemon.
One video which was circulated in particular was of a Chinese series called “My Secret Terrius” which premiered in 2018, and it was shown making references to Corona Virus, now people are asking how did they know about “Corona Virus” way back in 2018 which apparently made its appearance in late 2019. The answer to this is that Corona Virus is not a new virus, it made its first appearance way back in 2003, COVID-19 is basically a newer strain of the same virus. According to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) diseases are named to enable discussion on disease prevention, spread, transmissibility, severity and treatment. Human disease preparedness and response is WHO’s role, so diseases are officially named by WHO in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
ICTV announced “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)” as the name of the new virus on 11 February 2020. This name was chosen because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. While related, the two viruses are different.
WHO announced “COVID-19” as the name of this new disease on 11 February 2020, following guidelines previously developed with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
We are a country of 1.3 billion people, if a contagious virus-like Corona had spread in India the results would have been catastrophic and unimaginable, but India’s response was swift enough to control this novel coronavirus. As of now, there are just 3600 positive cases in India, which is commendable with respect to the size of the Indian population.
In countries like Italy and Spain, the situation is extremely fragile, and more than 25,000 people have died and the positive cases combinedly have crossed 3,00,000 which is staggering. Even the most advanced country like the USA, with the state of the art health facilities, have not been able to contain the virus, the number of confirmed positive cases in the USA stands at 3,12,211 as of now.
Many things have changed from the day “Lockdown” happened in India, the air pollution has fallen drastically even the “gas chamber” like Delhi has a breathable environment. For the first time in many years, the Dhauladhar Range is clearly visible from Ludhiyana a city in Punjab located 213 km away from the Dhauladhar Range. Dolphins have been spotted in Mumbai sea. Water in the rivers of the Ganga and Yamuna are cleaner, and this is all happening in just two weeks of the lockdown with no human activity. Just think, how things can change for good if we humans act responsibly.
Just imagine what animals, birds and other creatures would be thinking about this sudden disappearance of the humans.
[Here is a small conversation ]
Dog 1- where are all the people?
Dog 2- I don’t know, I also haven’t seen them for a while.
Bird 1- Have you guy’s noticed that air is much fresher now.
Cow 1- yesssss.
Dog 1- Are you guy’s not missing humans?
Cow 2- Definitely not.
Dog 2- But, why not?
Cow 2- They hit me with their car when I walk on the road, they also feed me food in the plastic bags.
Dog 1- But my master is very good, he takes good care of me.
Bird 1- Will you guy’s stop your personal debate and tell me what happened to humans.
Dog 1- My master was talking about some risk from something called Corona Virus.
Ox - I want things to be the same, I want human to be locked in their home’s so that we can live freely.
Bird 1 - Dear, Ox will you please act like an animal and not human’s.
Dog 2 - I think Bird is right, we should pray for human’s and their speedy recovery, it doesn’t feel good to be locked up in a room.
Ox - But, I really pray to almighty, that when they come out of their homes they live in harmony with us.
Animal council - Dear Humans GET WELL SOON.
Coronavirus episode has definitely done a reality check on many things like the preparedness of our health sector, interstate relationship, efficiency to tackle such an epidemic and definitely the stark inequality that prevails in India. This entire episode can be of immense learning if we really want to improve on every front.
◆India spends just 1.28% of its GDP on health which is extremely meagre by any standards, this needs to shoot up, not only to tackle an epidemic like coronavirus but also to improve Indian health sector which is in shambles.
◆We are all aware of the stark inequalities that India faces, on Oxfam World Inequality Index, India ranks at 147 out of 157 countries. This definitely needs to be improved and that too very sooner, we need more proactive policies more progressive tax structure to reduce the income inequality and other programmes to uplift the poor and give them a respectable life. Because if we want to develop Indian we need to uplift our poor.
◆Questions have always been raised at the inter-state relationships, and how states are not in tandem with each other, officers at an inter-state level have no coordination at all and leaders always keep accusing each other of their failures and this was all very conspicuous when mass migration happened between states because of the sudden announcement of the lockdown. We clearly need better cooperation between states at each stage be it political or administrative.
◆No one can heal anything better than nature. And how nature has started healing itself, can be clearly seen and not only we can see it, we can feel it too, even though we are quarantined. And this can be a great lesson for all of us. And there is still time left if we come up with better environmental policies, and if we move towards clean and green energy, reduce waste, nature will also help us exponentially in improving the deteriorated conditions.
Most international organization are becoming redundant today and WHO is no exception. WHO definitely could have played a much bigger role in stopping this catastrophe, but it couldn’t. Here is what WHO tweeted about COVID-19 on 14th January 2020, which clearly shows it’s inefficiency.
And here is another proof of how WHO is clearly working under the pressure of the Chinese.
https://twitter.com/ShivAroor/status/1243946911897280512?s=19
When the world gets out of this epidemic, it definitely needs to review the structure, the working, the power balance of these institutions which are being dominated by a few countries and becoming inefficient.
Here, I will leave you with few links regarding the COVID-19.
◆This below is a link to live statistics regarding COVID-19 👇
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
◆And here you can make your donations to fight this catastrophe 👇
STAY SAFE 😷 STAY HEALTHY 💪
