Reflections on the pandemic era: Lessons not learnt

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CH 1: Thoughts for Humans

Dear Humans,

As I have been floating around the world carried by air and wind, and at times human whims and fallacies, I can say it has been an epic journey for me. From the moment I was born, in a country and place where you still are grappling to comprehend how I got started, I have sailed across many seas and seven oceans to traverse towns, cities, countries, regions, and continents. I may be a globetrotter for the wrong reasons, but I am who I am because of the way I have been created – over which I had neither any say nor any control.

While you have been unable to see me and have done your best to avoid me, I have had the freedom to be around you without your permission or regard for your volition. Whenever I have been with you, you either suffered or perished. I have been branded as “invisible enemy,” “angel of death,” and “masked enemy.” I might have brought your life to a halt for some time, but I am rather ignorant when it comes to understanding human beings.

That does not take away what I have seen, experienced, and come to know during my eventful lifetime. There is so much that has been said and written about me that I can hardly keep count. It is time to share my side of the story. As difficult as it is to comprehend my point of view, there are always two sides to a story. My account is more about what I saw than what I did – the latter, a chapter I would rather not make you revisit.

As you say, “be close to your friends but be closer with your enemies.” Sharing my thoughts so the valuable learnings are not missed out………….

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CH 2: Early days of my journey

You first heard about me in late 2019, originating from a provincial town in the Far East. However, I came to your serious attention thanks to the world’s healthcare services headquarters located in a posh city surrounded by a beautiful lake and majestic mountains. They called me the “novel coronavirus.” By the time the world characterized me as a pandemic, I had already begun moving around freely, much to my convenience and your anxiety. It is an irony that as you were claiming victory over me in early 2023, I was revisiting the same country, many claim I was born into. Life comes back in full circle – doesn’t it?  

From the very beginning, I was confused why it took you so long to fully appreciate my ability to wreak havoc on your lives. Aren’t you the species who claim to be the most intelligent among all? You transmit information and share knowledge in split seconds across the world with digital tools and social media, so I could not understand why you weren’t learning and responding fast enough.

Some of you outright downplayed my power and impact while others didn’t come to terms with reality until they themselves had bitten the dust. The signs were   there in the early days for you to take me seriously, but you didn’t until bad became worse while you were procrastinating. So, don’t tell me you didn’t have your fair share of warnings from me.  

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CH 3: Rejuvenating old bonds

While you blamed me for making you wear masks, locking you at home, keeping you away from the people and things you love, closures of shops and restaurants, travel bans etc., you have paid little attention to the good I’ve brought to your life. Think about it.

For many of you, when was the last time you spent an entire day with your family and sat down to mealtimes together? Helped your children with schoolwork or read them bedtime stories? Regularly paused to witness the beauty of sunrise and sunset? Have you become better acquainted with your next-door neighbors or come to know things your loved ones have been unable to share up until now? How did it feel to look through your home and find precious mementos from the past hidden away in the back of a closet or an emotional letter your loved one had kept from long ago? Did they spark memories you had so easily forgotten?

The time you’ve ended up spending at home enabled you to discover more about those closest to you. I offered you a once−in−a−lifetime chance to take your personal relationships to a new level, simply because you had the time for them. To sit and talk and really listen to what those closest to you think, feel and desire. In a way, my existence made you do things which you otherwise may not have found the time to do.

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CH 4: The beauty of small things

When you and your loved ones were suffering because of me, you were not allowed to get close to take care of them. You were denied access to parents and grandparents even though you wanted to nurse them in their last days. Some of you became prisoners  in your own home, while those of who were deemed infected weren’t even allowed out of your room. As you were forced to keep your distance, hugs with loved ones became a rarity. You missed the power of touch and the way it could convey emotions − joy, compassion, grief, and sadness.

Loneliness became an epidemic, even within homes and among families, as you were kept apart out of fear of contaminating those you loved. The experience of physical proximity with loved ones seemed so close and yet so far. As you looked through the window and gazed at the open sky, your mind struggled between being here and the fear of being lost there, beyond where the sky end and eternity begins. I made you appreciate life’s small pleasures and daily blessings, which many of you had taken for granted.

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CH 5: The disempowerment and helplessness

Despite the abundance of open air, the oxygen needed to treat those infected and gasping in desperation was in short supply in hospitals. While your own homes had more beds than necessary, hospital beds were unavailable for you, sending you running here and there like headless chickens.

Many of you could buy hospitals but could not secure what your lungs needed for survival. Some of you had private jets but could not cross over closed borders to reach facilities with capacity. The presidential and prime ministerial suites at the leading hospitals could guarantee the best medical services, but not life. You thought you could obtain material things to shape your destiny, then realized you could neither buy life nor dictate your fate. I showed you that even with everything, you can be powerless and have nothing.

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CH 6: The disconnect between thinking over doing

Those craving socialization and parties, holidays and resorts, beaches and bazaars, restaurants and bars, cafes and malls were forced into solitude and given an opportunity to pause, think, and reflect. Some of you had forgotten the value of quiet hours spent “thinking” as opposed to active hours busy “doing”. Whether counting your days at home due to lockdown, quarantined, lying in a hospital bed, or  recovering, this stillness was overdue for many of you who were accustomed to running – and often running on empty.

In your relentless quest for pleasure, joy, and fun, you forgot the inherent value of doing nothing, which is as important as doing something. Simple acts of idly gazing into the starry night through your bedside window or tracking the Milky Way while lying in a patch of green grass of your lawn that you hardly used are purer and more refreshing than some of the wild and reckless acts that you had missed indulging in. I inspired you to be thoughtful and wise and not corrosively active and impetuously reactive.

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CH 7: Respecting mother nature

Because I made you pause in your relentless fuel consumption and carbon emission, the world started recovering. The air became cleaner, smog disappeared, and the skies looked bluer. As you stayed indoors, animals ventured outdoors again; for the first time in a long time, you could marvel at dolphins diving in the rivers and lakes that you had seized and animals prowling the streets that you had left empty. In the first quarter of 2020, when about half of the world was confined because of me, with more than 90 countries and territories under lockdown during the peak of the pandemic, global emissions witnessed a decrease of 17% after hitting an all-time high in 2019 at 36.8 billion tons of CO₂. So, my presence in the world has been more environmentally friendly than yours.

Had you left nature alone, there is so much she could have given you in return. You keep debating climate change, but time and tide wait for none − nor does mother nature. From melting ice in the earth’s polar regions to the wild bushfires in some of the world’s largest continents, from the depletion of the world’s largest tropical rainforest to killing wild animals to satisfy your ego and greed, you seem to have embarked on a suicidal journey that mother nature can only repay with more suffering and calamity than I have caused. Don’t make the same mistake that you made with me and underestimate the sheer destructive powers of nature until it is too late to recover.

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CH 8: Health protocols making me smirk

While the numbers of cases and deaths were mounting, even something as basic as wearing a mask, your first health protocol, became a matter of politics. With communications proliferating every day through digital platforms and social media, the physical act of putting a lid on your mouths contained powerful as well as symbolic messages on filtering and carefully using both the air you inhale and words you utter.

You saw how unfiltered messages can lay siege to the heart of the world’s oldest democracy; when words become a tool for exploitation of human ignorance and fallacies, they can be more dangerous than me. You also saw how mindful messages delivered at the right time can save lives. While you were suffering, the stupidity and complexity of politics were apparent — an outcome of the ignorant and incompetent leaders that you at times choose.

Your second health protocol, washing hands, may have protected you by disinfecting me. However, even the strictest hygiene standards can’t protect you from the people who need to wash their souls more than they need to wash their hands. When I see people behaving ignorantly and arrogantly because they have not gotten their thoughts and acts together, I am bewildered by their irresponsible words and acts. Particularly, when it is more about making political scores than saving lives. When hundreds of millions suffer and millions die, yet one chooses to remain oblivious and behave as if it is not happening, they need to wash both their hearts and minds. Far more daunting than washing me away is washing away misguided beliefs and false perceptions which are much stickier and more costly than I am.

While I forced social distancing, your third health protocol, I was pleasantly surprised to see the many instances in which you came together emotionally. From the music you played to the neighborhood from your separate balconies to the songs you sang in chorus virtually, from various parts of the world, the strength of human connectivity was astounding. From the poem written by a child to the money raised by a war veteran, from communities coming together in support of those in need to small acts of individual kindness that made a positive difference to many, I was awed to see the strength of human bonds defy social boundaries, national borders, and geographical distance. Innate human connection through compassion and empathy proved to be more powerful than the safety that resulted when I made you distance socially.

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CH 9: The power of selflessness

As I was swirling around the globe, healthcare workers were on their toes, displaying a degree of dedication, commitment, and tenacity that puts me to shame. While I had to do nothing in particular to affect the people I infected, these warriors worked relentlessly day and night, continually putting themselves in  harm’s way to make a positive difference for individuals clinging to life or suffering in isolation. While their own loved ones felt anguish and anxiety as they were busy saving lives, the loved ones of patients found hope and solace in the selfless act of these superhumans.

What can be a greater act of sacrifice than putting one’s own life on the line to save the life of another? These frontline healthcare workers and I may have been on opposite sides of the fence, but I salute them for their humanity and courage. If the difficulties I created have been challenging beyond measure, then the selfless acts of sacrifice they have shown have been inspiring beyond words.  

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CH 10: The lopsided economic arguments

A lot has been told about how I wrecked economies, forced business closures, and caused people to lose their jobs. What you forget to mention is how I also gave rise to trillion-dollar companies who thrived because of the effect I have had on the world. You may not have been shopping in malls, or eating at cafes and restaurants, but these businesses have been reaching out to you through your mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and apps.

Go ahead and blame me for making you too comfortable in ordering everything online while you could not be creative enough to change your old business models and initiate social reforms even in these changing times. Otherwise, why do a few people have more money than what the entire world needs and many go hungry, not having the means for their bare survival? No wonder that the global 1% owns nearly half of the world’s wealth while the 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in the world’s poorest continent with most countries. You have been lecturing and debating these issues forever with no end in sight to this deep chasm.

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CH 11: Harm to education pales to your failures  

While you have blamed me for the closures of schools and campuses and for students missing their classmates, the chance to school your children from home gave you a new insight into their learning lives. It also taught you the importance of teachers’ work. However, even during these difficult times, you could not ensure distant education for many students who neither own a cell phone nor have access to the web. Even today, more than 2 billion school children do not have access to the internet.

While you spend billions buying arms and weapons that you may never use, you are not equally generous in ensuring access to universal education for all − to the benefit of every child. Global nuclear spending is approximately US$ 140K every minute. Whereas, only US$ 50 billion is needed to ensure 200 million out-of-school children globally can safely return to school. To do that, you need to divert just 8 months of nuclear spending to children’s education. Do you have the wisdom and courage to do that? The answer will tell whether you have the moral right to blame me for the harm done to education, which pales to your systematic failures that  have been around much longer than I have.

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CH 12: Subjugation of women: A centuries-old shame

Across the world, I have witnessed women doing more labor − from cleaning and cooking to teaching and office work − while earning less pay and hardly receiving any appreciation. I have not been able to figure out why such simple acts of fairness and gratitude are missing. Is it because the negative attitudes towards women are so entrenched in cultures around the world that you endlessly talk about “gender issues” and “gender sensitivity” yet still do not treat them with the respect and gratitude they deserve? Or is it that your insensitivities towards women, which span across centuries, are so bad that even now they have to be addressed as part of your “global agenda”?

I may have caused you harm for few years. You have been causing your other halves to suffer, both physically and mentally, for thousands of years. Even in the world’s most powerful country and advanced economy, in the peak of the pandemic, every minute on average 20 women were infected by me − while 25 were raped, physically assaulted and stalked by their own kind. Hence, before you talk to me about hurt, look at how you have been hurting your other halves for centuries.

Similarly, I saw you lecture big on empowering women with education and employment in a country where they had earlier languished under male dominance, but then they were deserted when your own interests were no longer served. It took less than a month to disown 20 years (2001-2020) of social reform which saw women’s life expectancy grow from 56- 64 years-old and the number of girls enrolled in primary schools grew by more than 80%. As people ran for their lives, all you cared for was the safety of your nationals. I can’t imagine being as opportunistic and exploitative as some of you are.

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CH 13: Skin color and systemic racism

Tell me one thing: if the color of blood below the skin is red for all of you, then why does the color of your skin matter so much that you indulge in the kind of brutality that even puts me to shame? If my presence stops you from breathing, it is due to the sheer nature of my chemical composition − over which I have no control. Your acts, however, show that you can be worse than me − i.e. stopping your fellow human from breathing by your deliberate acts of cruelty.

The world was horrified when it saw footage of an unarmed, handcuffed man begging for his life with a knee pressed into his neck. He was calling for mercy, saying “Please don’t shoot me…I am going to die here man, I just had COVID, I am scared”- why did you not pay heed to his desperate pleas? He survived me, but succumbed to your senseless assault on his life – congratulations on your efficacy! Now let me ask you, would this have happened if the victim and the perpetrator shared the same skin tone? It is an irony that in this country 1 in every 1,000 black men have died because of me, whereas 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to lose their lives due to police brutality.

I may be harmful and fatal, but I am neither deliberately brutal nor purposefully discriminatory like some of you are. I did not infect anybody based on their money, power, skin color, or social status. If I have infected a homeless poor person, I also have not spared kings and queens living in castles, or presidents and prime ministers living in palaces. So, if I am branded as the “invisible enemy”, some of you have proven yourselves to be an “open enemy”. However, all is not lost, as I saw ray of hope in those who refused to remain silent and took to the streets around the world whenever wrong was done to your fellow humans − even at the risk of their own wellbeing as they knew they were being exposed to me at that time as they joined the protest rallies.

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CH 14: Missing empathy of the sufferers

I came to know that the most agonizing experience for humankind, prior to me, was World War II. Millions perished, countless suffered, and entire countries were ravaged. Individuals from a particular religious sect were subject to systematic persecution, torture, humiliation, and sent to death camps for just belonging to that faith. Given the terrible suffering they had gone through, I would have expected their ability to empathize to be on the higher side.

Hence, I could not understand how they could kill more children in a week of May 2021 with bombs than I was able to do in months with infections. I also could not understand the logic of acting in self-defense when it was mostly innocent children, harmless women, and elders who paid the price with their lives. These innocents were not a match for the overwhelming military superiority of their rivals whose casualties due to the rocket attacks were around one-twentieth of the other side. During the 11 days of attack, 112 died infected by me, while 219 people, almost double – including 65 children, 35 women and 16 elderly – were killed by bombings. You have again proven yourselves to be more brutal and deadlier than I have been.

However, I was inspired again when people across the world came out in the streets during lockdowns in support of humanity, including people from their own faith who joined the protests as they spoke from their heart and conscience. It is this enduring human spirit and goodness that has been one of my best discoveries during this epic journey. Similarly as bombs fell on a country left orphan by politicians most of whom shed crocodile tears, while children, women, and elderly flee and die, it is the ordinary people who took to the streets.

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CH 15: The vaccine disgrace

As vaccinations became available, I thought finally I can leave in peace without sending any more of you to rest in peace. The logical expectation was a “vaccine urgency” – i.e. encouraging everyone to get vaccinated in the shortest time possible to safeguard against me. To my utter surprise and dismay, there came coining of new phrases like “vaccine diplomacy” and “vaccine protectionism,” which no one even contemplated when they were desperate to stop my onslaught.

It was shocking that despite the sufferings I caused, resulting in millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of infections, you could not come together in a matter of global lifesaving urgency. Otherwise, in the initial phase, how come the 7 wealthiest nations, representing just 13% of the world’s populations, bought over 50% of the world’s vaccine supply? Thanks to vaccine inequity and unequal global distribution, I had enough time to evolve and reappear (Omicron) to strike again.

While you were fighting over who shipped vaccines to whom, sometimes outright stopping shipment, arguing over patent and distribution issues, and hoarding vaccines when others are waiting in long queue for the jab – people were suffering and dying. What a mess of your own making! 

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CH 16: Lost opportunity for the faithful and their leaders

Despite having fought one another over religion for centuries, I have seen little effort on the part of the believers and their leaders to understand or relate to the religious underpinnings of my existence. If you believe in God being the giver and taker of lives, have you considered what message He may be sending through the ordeal you have experienced in me? If in death you are to leave this world alone, not accompanied by your near and dear ones, you got a glimpse of this even when alive. Being infected and in quarantine, at times counting your days in isolation, you got a sense of how the final journey may feel like.

You saw yourselves as supreme beings and felt invincible because of the money, technology, and power of the material world. Then you saw how a small dose of me, invisible to human eyes, was enough to infect hundreds of millions, bringing the entire world to a standstill and near collapse. Whereas you need more than 100,000 kilos of nuclear bombs to destroy the world, the Creator could do the same to all of your lives with just a 50-nanometer particle, without you ever having witnessed it with your naked eyes, and with very little destruction caused to anything else as a nuclear weapon would have done in my place.

No matter how wealthy and powerful you are, if you are one of those who believe in God’s existence, He showed you how vulnerable and helpless you can become within a matter of seconds. Even at funeral, it was a lonely goodbye as loved ones could only pray from a distance, not allowed to lay the deceased in final rest. The Creator did not need money, technology, or power to freeze you from end to end across the world. He only needed His will. He could isolate communities, regions, nations, continents, societies, and the entire world at a time you thought you could travel anywhere at anytime. Most importantly, He showed how life can be extinguished within seconds and how, without notice, all your material possessions and yearnings can evaporate so quickly into thin air.

It was surprising that very few, if any, of your religious leaders could make this connection and relate my existential threat to the greater messages that may have been coming from above the sky. Let this not be a missed opportunity for believers and their leaders from across the world.

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CH 17: Parting thoughts

Many of you say that even when the extent of the threat I have posed is gone, things may not ever be the  same. Although I do not know how much I will continue to impact your lives, I do know that rushing to normalcy − whatever that may represent for you − will result in a missed opportunity to pause and reflect on the lessons embedded inside this once−in−a−life−time experience that happened to you because of me.

It is natural that you have started going back to work, schools and universities have reopened, restaurants and cafes have become busy, and transportation are gradually operating at full strength. You have started socializing like before, travels and tours have sprung back as those paused holidays have resumed and borders have reopened. The biggest mistake you can make is to take things for granted; this includes your life, loved ones, family, friends, health, wealth, freedom, and opportunities. Then there are things that money cannot buy and even I cannot take away − i.e. love and affection, care and giving, compassion and kindness, bravery and courage, generosity and sacrifice.

You have lived with me for few years. Spending your time, energy, and resources to curb my spread and fight my effect is understandable. What is not comprehensible is your failure to look into things beyond money, economy, employment, education and so on and so forth. As I bring my letter to an end, I leave you with a few questions to answer, which will hopefully illuminate what’s important in your lives. Think about my presence in the world, your life, and  consider all that has happened. This is more about you than me; here it goes…

1. During the pandemic, what are the things you have learned about yourself that you otherwise would not have?
2. Who are the people that matter most, and why? Are there those who previously mattered, but no longer do? Why?
3. Has the pandemic changed the things that matter most to you? Think about the things that have become more or less important to you and why your perspective has changed.
4. Are you a different person today than you were before the pandemic started? How has it changed you?
5. If I had taken your life and then you be given a second chance by your Creator, how would you be living your life? Why aren’t you doing it now while you still can?

I have said my piece. Hopefully, we will not see each other again. I sincerely hope the lessons learned during this ordeal will outlive my presence in your lives. As I already said, I am what I am with no option to change myself. You always have a choice – a choice to be different, better, stronger, kinder, and wiser. If you want to change the world, start with yourself. With that aura of optimism, let me leave you on a lighter note with some of the memes you have invented during this ordeal.

Finally, as we part our ways, let this not be another missed opportunity for you. I leave you with food for thought for a “Great Realization” so eloquently narrated, as a father speaks to his inquisitive son.

Good luck to you humans. Know that I’m rooting for you.

COVID.

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