Corona Virus And Loss Of Precious Human Lives

               The world has been affected by a pandemic which has been unprecedented in recent modern times. In my thirty years of living, I haven’t seen days like these happen to me or anyone around. Life was normal and we expect the same environment to be prevalent always. But nature has its own ideas and the smallest of the micro living beings have brought the giants to its knees and caused a disruption of humongous proportion. The world is never new to these pandemics. Even before sophisticated days, in 1918, there is a H1N1 virus pandemic known as Spanish Flu which infected 500 million people or a quarter of the world’s population at that time. This virus killed 50 million or 5 crores making it one of the deadliest pandemics in the history. At present, 50,000 people lost their lives due to novel corona virus which means it is 0.1% of the death rate of viral pandemic of 1918 to 1920. The world bears the brunt of many such viral and micro-organismic attacks every now and then in its history and tens of thousands of people have lost lives. One way to look at it is the nature takes corrective action whenever the balance tilts in the wrong side. We, humans are also responsible for causing the misbalance in the nature.

                The world came to a standstill and all the action is suspended till the present situation melts in favour of humans. I have 5 steps to follow which will tilt this balance. The virus is miniature in size and everyone tends to disregard miniatures but look at the mega impact it has created world-wide. The impact is such that the world can lose trillions of dollars in global income which might pull countries into recession besides losing precious human lives. When we are talking about viruses, let me confess that many people regard me as a virus. Like a virus, I work inherently, underlyingly and bring a change in the society. The difference is virus brings negative change and I bring positive change and people sarcastically refer me as a virus. Nevertheless, I will tell 5 things which everyone needs to follow to escape from the scare of this virus. 1. Keep yourselves indoor all the time. Don’t come out whatsoever 2. Keep the lockdown in effect and take part in no activity. – bring the society and country to a halt temporarily 3. Keep social distancing a practicing norm and never get close to unknown persons4. Keep your hands clean by washing as often as you can 5. Keep your nose mask on if you step out, as this virus cannot penetrate them. Keep yourselves busy by following these simple 5 steps and no virus can ever endanger you or anyone else. This is my five-step formula to keep viruses at bay and I advocate everyone to get benefit from this timely five pointer advice. If you don’t compromise and don’t keep up to these five things, then you are laying bare to these viruses.

              The countries which suffered heavy losses are the ones which did not follow these rules. India is one of the countries to enforce these rules after the global outbreak and the number of infected people is below 2000 among 130 crore population. Lockdown prevented thousands of positive cases. On the other side, take the case of Italy. The Italians roamed freely, grouped together and took lightly of the upcoming pandemic and it resulted in the heavy loss of lives. In a population of 6 crores, one lakh fifteen thousand are infected and 14,000 are dead. The whole of Europe is in a very bad shape with 10000 deceased in Spain, 5400 in France, 3000 in United Kingdom and 1100 in Germany. There are deeply disturbing numbers since the deceased are not just men or women but fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and 50 holy priests as well.

               If this is expected in lacklustre Europe which is lethargic in its reaction to the outbreak, what happened to the gem of a nation U.S.A. and its mercurial President. The worlds most advanced, developed, technologically - light years ahead, sophisticated and ultra-modern first world country need to learn from the poor third world nation about how to save its own people. India did a much better job in controlling the pandemic. In fact, it did a much better job than all the developed nations put together. All the superlatives to the country come next. From what I saw, the POTUS has a callous disdain towards the lives of the people which is highly condemnable. The words like ‘more than two lakhs will die’ is fear-inducive and lack of apathy towards people’s suffering. If I were the POTUS, I would say I wouldn’t allow a single American to die in the hands of an unknown virus. With very less visitors to the country, when head of India ordered a 21-day lockdown of 1.3 billion people what can the POTUS do to its meagre 32 crore people given there is heavy inflow of visitors as well. The head of U.S. did nothing and the result is there are more than 2 lakh infections – the highest in any country in the world. I am deeply worried about the plight of these many Americans who I care very much. When a pandemic of this magnitude strike, U.S. should stand as an example to other nations given their affinity to rationality, quality, science and technology. But U.S. acted as a third-rate nation with no discipline and no sense of urgency. Please transfer the POTUS to India and our P.M. to U.S. Then you will see what governance is all about and not just daily media briefings. Even if it is not about governance, you should at least have a large heart like mine to save your own people. This situation precisely arises when you are indifferent to the death of the people you serve. The most puzzling aspect is why still there is no national lockdown amidst these many confirmed cases. What is the use of these elected lawmakers when you can’t get over the laws and impose a national lockdown? Where are the presidential qualities in the leader to lead the nation back into safety? Why don’t you use your mighty U.S. army, police to house-arrest people for a month and control the epidemic? It is time to act and prove your mettle to the world which is watching with highly valuing the life of every American.