ON CORONAVIRUS

COVID-19 is making everybody pay, but it is making the poor pay more. Weeks ago an Angolan broke all the rules of lockdown. He left us stunned, but he was right. He said hunger would kill him before the coronavirus, therefore, he was out on the road looking for job and food.

Any attempt, feeble or forceful, to prove him wrong would mean the coffining of truth.  

The African isn’t alone. Small-time traders in Italy and Spain have been heard saying that they weren’t really bothered because for them it was an either/or situation. Either the virus or the poverty, caused by the lack of business, would kill them.

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True, countries like the United Arab Emirates are specifically and handsomely answering the needs of the marginalised in the shape of meal campaigns…

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Anyway, the above tales, like all tales of sorrow, are endless and unbearably heavy in terms of anguish. In India, workers have died while trying to cover hundreds of miles by foot in search of jobs. If they stay at home starvation will kill them, if they don’t COVID-19 will kill them. Millions were facing hunger in India due to the countrywide lockdown, a report claimed.

The situation is getting grimmer in neighbouring Pakistan. The cases are rising.

The rich are rereading novels, listening to music, going through hours of meditation, watching movies and painting. They can do all this because their refrigerators have enough by way of healthy food and beverages. But there is no clear answer for those who worked through the day to eat in the night. The sun continues to rise daily, but the day for them remains dark and their ovens cold.

True, countries like the United Arab Emirates are specifically and handsomely answering the needs of the marginalised in the shape of meal campaigns, but a lot more is expected because there are more poor people than rich in this world. We don’t need to read history to know that.

The emotional burden of the crisis is so huge that it is actually driving people to suicide. A provincial German minister did kill himself because he found it impossible to take the load of the agony, whose weight defied measurement.

A New York emergency doctor, who treated coronavirus patients killed herself, with family, police and physicians linking her death to trauma faced by health care workers battling the outbreak.
Lorna Breen, 49, died on Sunday from self-inflicted injuries in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she had been staying with her family, the police said in a statement.
Breen ran the emergency department of New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Manhattan, a facility that has seen a huge influx of COVID-19 patients.

There is no doubt that the killer storm will blow over because everything that has a beginning has an end too. The great worry is the emotional and economical damage it is going to cause and the body bags it is going to leave for us.