Vishakh Mohan's Blog
April 23, 2020
Contagion 2020
When I am writing this blog, 41 days have been passed since the lockdown started in Poland. On 8th February, if I remember, that is the day for the first time I heard about this deadly virus. The virus originated from a city named Wuhan in the People’s Republic of China. My friend Gabriel mentioned this contagion, and he told me that it’s known as Coronavirus. This pandemic has another name, Coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19. We saw many videos on YouTube to know much more about this virus. We noticed some visuals of People were dying in the streets, and citizens of china were locked down in their houses.
“China is in Lockdown,” we thought it was just a joke; I couldn’t even imagine the shutdown of a vast country like China (Off course Population is more than 1.4 billion). I was overconfident that the virus is not going to spread in Europe, so I told Gabriel that “Don’t worry; it is not going to affect Europe.” Being honest, I wasn’t worried about this virus before the second week of March; I have even booked my flight ticket to India for my brother’s marriage, which is supposed to happen on may. Things changed very quickly; I would say the whole world changed instantly. Not only China, but the entire globe is also in lockdown now. The leaders who known to be brave and heroes are also helpless in this deadly pandemic. People are dying everywhere, and every day; now, I am scared and feel sorrow for those who lost their family members. Except for some people, no one thought about this apocalypse was coming in 2020.
Like COVID-19, humanity had survived many other deadly diseases; I would like to mention some of them that became the most significant threat of humankind. In the 14th century, there was a pandemic that caused the deaths of up to 200 million people in whole over the world, and it was known as Black Death or Plague caused by bacterium Yersinia Pestis. It was the second Plague pandemic, and before there was a Plague of Justinian in the 6th century. Black Death had vanished almost 30% to 60% of Europe’s population. According to historians, this contagion also originated from central Asia like COVID-19. After Black Death, there was another pandemic that happened in 1918, and it is known as Spanish flu. This was an influenza disease caused by the H1NI virus. Spanish flu infected about a third of the world’s population, and it killed over 1% of the total population at the time. In 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) reported in China, which had the same symptoms as COVID-19. The incubation period for this virus was two to ten days, and out of the 8098 infected people, 774 people had died due to SARS. This virus caused widespread panic in the entire Asian continent.
Scientists say that the origin of this virus from bat or pangolins and they assumed that the virus likely to spread from the “wet markets (they trade wild animals in this market)” in Wuhan. SARS also originated from wet markets and was also from the Coronavirus family. Even though the Chinese government knew about the origin of SARS, the regime wasn’t ready to ban these markets or stop wild animal trading. Look at now, and the whole world is suffering for their greed and carelessness. I would slam the Chinese government for spreading this contagion; they hid this virus from the world for more than one month. Dr. Li Wenliang, the first man who raised the alarm about this deadly virus outbreak, became silenced after Chinese police paid him a visit, and later, he died in the hospital with the viral infection, or the government ended him to hide the news about this contagion, who knows.
Since its inception, we don’t have any idea how many people traveled to whole around the world from China, so by hiding this contagion, they betrayed all of us, whole humanity. Many people believe that China created this virus to become the most reliable power in the world, and Donald Trump says that China created the virus in their sophisticated laboratory (Maybe that’s the only statement I can somewhat agree with the current American President). I can’t deny this allegation since they haven’t even revealed the actual number of cases recorded or how many tests they have done in their country. The world has been crossed more than 2.7 million positive corona cases, and one hundred ninety thousand people lost their lives, prophecy is not saying eternity or the number of lives this virus is going to take. We have to find the vaccine as soon as possible; I can’t see any other way to stop this pandemic. Every day number of cases is soaring like rocket speed. To stop spreading the virus, we can take precautions as the health authorities say mandatory (Like using masks and gloves, clean the house, washing our hands and using sanitizers kills the virus). We touch our face more than 3000 times per day, but we wash our hands only five or six times, for 24 hours, where else we touch by our hands, and I am afraid that we have to use masks and gloves even inside the house to avoid the infection.
Europe and the USA are fighting with a disastrous war after World War II against an invisible army. I had visited Italy and Spain before this pandemic happened; both of them are one of the most beautiful countries I have ever seen. Their lauding sociable culture seduces us not to leave that place, but I never thought that this friendly culture became a curse for them in the doomsday. This is not easy, people are suffering, and in pain. My heart was melting, and tears were running from eyes when I saw those coffins of innocent lives garnered and dumped in the deep hole like abandoned ghosts. When I watched ‘Contagion’ movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, I never thought that this was going to happen in our near future; the writer had done an excellent job by predicting exactly how we are going to fight against a deadly virus.
I want to say more, but I am struggling with words, and my hands are trembling while writing this blog. This lockdown may suffocate some people, but for others, this is a short time to know about themselves. I would never imagine that the entire 8 billion populations were going to sit in their home and not being busy for one month; come on, this is an actual miracle. Lockdown taught me to sit in my chair and enjoy the beautiful sunset through my window every day. Sky has a lot to tell for us; it tells us many stories which have written in the past or writing in the present or going to write in the future. Now, I realized that nature is beautiful; we have to know it, listen to it and see it. Each sunset passes, I believe that the next day will begin with good news for the whole of humanity. Pete Seeger had written a song called “We shall overcome someday”; I was listening to this song today, and I believe we shall overcome this pandemic soon; I don’t know when or how, but we will definitely overcome.
- By Vishakh
“China is in Lockdown,” we thought it was just a joke; I couldn’t even imagine the shutdown of a vast country like China (Off course Population is more than 1.4 billion). I was overconfident that the virus is not going to spread in Europe, so I told Gabriel that “Don’t worry; it is not going to affect Europe.” Being honest, I wasn’t worried about this virus before the second week of March; I have even booked my flight ticket to India for my brother’s marriage, which is supposed to happen on may. Things changed very quickly; I would say the whole world changed instantly. Not only China, but the entire globe is also in lockdown now. The leaders who known to be brave and heroes are also helpless in this deadly pandemic. People are dying everywhere, and every day; now, I am scared and feel sorrow for those who lost their family members. Except for some people, no one thought about this apocalypse was coming in 2020.
Like COVID-19, humanity had survived many other deadly diseases; I would like to mention some of them that became the most significant threat of humankind. In the 14th century, there was a pandemic that caused the deaths of up to 200 million people in whole over the world, and it was known as Black Death or Plague caused by bacterium Yersinia Pestis. It was the second Plague pandemic, and before there was a Plague of Justinian in the 6th century. Black Death had vanished almost 30% to 60% of Europe’s population. According to historians, this contagion also originated from central Asia like COVID-19. After Black Death, there was another pandemic that happened in 1918, and it is known as Spanish flu. This was an influenza disease caused by the H1NI virus. Spanish flu infected about a third of the world’s population, and it killed over 1% of the total population at the time. In 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) reported in China, which had the same symptoms as COVID-19. The incubation period for this virus was two to ten days, and out of the 8098 infected people, 774 people had died due to SARS. This virus caused widespread panic in the entire Asian continent.
Scientists say that the origin of this virus from bat or pangolins and they assumed that the virus likely to spread from the “wet markets (they trade wild animals in this market)” in Wuhan. SARS also originated from wet markets and was also from the Coronavirus family. Even though the Chinese government knew about the origin of SARS, the regime wasn’t ready to ban these markets or stop wild animal trading. Look at now, and the whole world is suffering for their greed and carelessness. I would slam the Chinese government for spreading this contagion; they hid this virus from the world for more than one month. Dr. Li Wenliang, the first man who raised the alarm about this deadly virus outbreak, became silenced after Chinese police paid him a visit, and later, he died in the hospital with the viral infection, or the government ended him to hide the news about this contagion, who knows.
Since its inception, we don’t have any idea how many people traveled to whole around the world from China, so by hiding this contagion, they betrayed all of us, whole humanity. Many people believe that China created this virus to become the most reliable power in the world, and Donald Trump says that China created the virus in their sophisticated laboratory (Maybe that’s the only statement I can somewhat agree with the current American President). I can’t deny this allegation since they haven’t even revealed the actual number of cases recorded or how many tests they have done in their country. The world has been crossed more than 2.7 million positive corona cases, and one hundred ninety thousand people lost their lives, prophecy is not saying eternity or the number of lives this virus is going to take. We have to find the vaccine as soon as possible; I can’t see any other way to stop this pandemic. Every day number of cases is soaring like rocket speed. To stop spreading the virus, we can take precautions as the health authorities say mandatory (Like using masks and gloves, clean the house, washing our hands and using sanitizers kills the virus). We touch our face more than 3000 times per day, but we wash our hands only five or six times, for 24 hours, where else we touch by our hands, and I am afraid that we have to use masks and gloves even inside the house to avoid the infection.
Europe and the USA are fighting with a disastrous war after World War II against an invisible army. I had visited Italy and Spain before this pandemic happened; both of them are one of the most beautiful countries I have ever seen. Their lauding sociable culture seduces us not to leave that place, but I never thought that this friendly culture became a curse for them in the doomsday. This is not easy, people are suffering, and in pain. My heart was melting, and tears were running from eyes when I saw those coffins of innocent lives garnered and dumped in the deep hole like abandoned ghosts. When I watched ‘Contagion’ movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, I never thought that this was going to happen in our near future; the writer had done an excellent job by predicting exactly how we are going to fight against a deadly virus.
I want to say more, but I am struggling with words, and my hands are trembling while writing this blog. This lockdown may suffocate some people, but for others, this is a short time to know about themselves. I would never imagine that the entire 8 billion populations were going to sit in their home and not being busy for one month; come on, this is an actual miracle. Lockdown taught me to sit in my chair and enjoy the beautiful sunset through my window every day. Sky has a lot to tell for us; it tells us many stories which have written in the past or writing in the present or going to write in the future. Now, I realized that nature is beautiful; we have to know it, listen to it and see it. Each sunset passes, I believe that the next day will begin with good news for the whole of humanity. Pete Seeger had written a song called “We shall overcome someday”; I was listening to this song today, and I believe we shall overcome this pandemic soon; I don’t know when or how, but we will definitely overcome.
- By Vishakh
