How Covid brought relatives and friends together ..

Covid time has given us many shocks, it has also given us many surprises.

I have many relatives and friends in the western hemisphere. It was difficult tying to talk to them and even difficult to meet them as they were busy with their rich, successful, material, busy lives and we with ours.

But with the onset of the Covid virus, I got the golden opportunity to renew friendships, meet so many of my old classmates and relatives, who were earlier too busy to talk to us but now had the time and willingness to talk to us mortal beings on this past of the globe.

Covid virus, courtesy Harvard Medical School.

The massive spread of the Corona virus in the western world and its ensuing deaths and grief in the western world shocked everyone around the world. While the virus was spreading like wildfire in the west, its spread was less in Asia and Europe. Is it a delayed contagion or reduced impact contagion, only time can tell.

How did Asian countries (other than China, who was excessively greedy and was looking at dominating the world) manage the successful containment through social preventive measures like a strictly deployed lockdown and social distancing in society help them to contain the spread of the virus. The politicians managed to convince the population of the urgency much better than in the west. In the west we could see people openly challenging the dictats of the government on roads and through the media. They were conveniently forgetting the fact that these strict containment measures were for the well being of the people.

The western world was taken aghast at how successfully we in India were able to comply with the strict social measures much more successully than in the west, to contain the spread of this virus and turned around to find out what we did right and what we did correctly. As of the time of writing this article, India has just 2100 deaths for a population of 1300 million compared to 80,000 plus in US with a population one fourth of India at 320 million. It clearly demonstrates the failure and lack of competitiveness and concern for the common man in the western society. Everything is based and measured on economic terms.

During the covid time, old friends started calling up and old friendships were renewed, which was a good thing. Now I feel for lasting peace in the world, we need to have more such viruses attacking the world more often, so that people do not forget their original humble backgrounds, friends and relatives. But I should say there were some true friends and relatives who were sincere in their relationships from beginning itself.

We need to understand that in this world, we are all together, no man is an island, we all live and die together.

With the threat of society taking more time to develop herd immunity and delay in coming out was a successful vaccine to contain the virus, the future picture does not look promising. With no successful cure in sight, the news of medical practitioners succumbing to the virus is another issue of concern. The complete surrender of humanity , irrespective of class, colour, creed and race, being rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, educated or illiterate, the kneeling down in front of the virus has been apalling, shocking, nauseating and sickening.  

Humans behaving strangely an boastfully, forgetful of their helplessness in front of nature and God, has been there from time immemorial. How culture, education, knowledge and wisdom will take us forward as humans is what matters most.

George