Today is March 29, 2020.
There is a pandemic (COVID-19) going on right now. It has started in Wuhan, China around the end of last year and now it has engulfed the earth. When I first read about it, I was travelling Bangladesh for my brother's wedding. I have to be honest, I thought about it for a little bit, thought about the minor disruption that it was going to cause, and then shrugged it off. I vaguely remember when H1N1 pandemic happened. I was reading about it a lot in the news that time but my personal life was pretty much unscathed from it. I thought of COVID-19 in the same way.
In the last three months, the perception has changed quite a bit. The long incubation period and highly contagious nature of the virus has made it easy for the virus to spread around the world. The biggest challenge, as I hear it now, is that no healthcare system is designed to tackle such a surge in sick population. Also, for certain demographic groups, the fatality rate is quite high.
For me personally, I have been in isolation for the last two weeks. I am blessed to have the resources to stay home. But there are important people in my life who have much higher exposure and I am really worried about it. I just pray and hope that everyone stays healthy and safe during this time.
There is a lot of bashing going for the leaders of many countries, specially in the media. Unfortunately, we live in an age where media and it's pundits have very little skin in the game. And due to the nature of 24/7 content generation, they end up generating a lot of garbage. What most of the media is trying to forget is that during January and February, they also tried to minimized the scope of the problem and criticized most of the measures taken by China.
Another trend that is emerging is that some individuals and companies are looking at this as a PR opportunities. Whether things they are doing is really helping or not, they are not shying away from slapping themselves on the back. Humanity deserves better than this.
Published at: 03/29/2020