No one could have ever imagined or envisaged the world getting to the gloomy place it is now, at this time of the year - Well, with the exception of Dean Koontz's Eyes of Darkness. It started out as a little seemingly harmless flame that was expected to fizzle out but then it engulfed the world. Yeah, 2020 so far has been something we have not experienced in quite a while. A shocker? Definitely has surprised us in morbid ways. A thriller? I really don't know if we should call it a plot year twist, it probably has thrilled some, in spine-tingling ways. Is there still more to it or have we just seen it all?
If this will be all, we could all predict how the year will end. Messed up!. Oh No! We are already in isolation, it's messed up already. We are getting new hobbies we didn't long for. We are already getting used to some hope crushing daily routines - Eat sleep, binge, chat, type, laugh over some not-so-funny videos, hug your pillow, pace around the house, wash, rinse, repeat. I mean I heard someone say he found out it took 1:34 seconds for his fan to stop circling after it is switched off, that's boredom at its peak. Could it be worse?
INCEPTION
It was not this bad though. Just this December last year, the virus surface in Wuhan, and it seemed like something that would go soon, we didn't think much of it. It grew bigger to something scarier, infecting thousands and not leaving much in its wake. The widespread infections started to gain traction, attracting attention while still generating tension. I started following up on the COVID'19 (Corona whatever) virus in January and the story that caught my eye was the Chinese doctor who died of the infection. He had previously sounded an alarm of the impending danger and the chaos hanging right over but he was a silenced. He didn't get much of vindication as he died of the same virus he so strived to protect people from. It was then I knew it would be more serious than we thought.
Oh, we are miles apart, kilometers away, we are still safe - is what every one thought. Forgetting that even the black death which occurred 500 years ago, with no technological advancement to facilitate the spread of the disease still had a hand in over 200 million deaths. How much more now that it's easy to just board a Diamond Princess or hop on a plane to your destination. Our bubble was perforated when it started to appear in other countries, now, it is a pandemic and what did this mean, for us?
A Pause!!!!馃槱 Just like the whole world was placed on hold, to be continued at the earliest convenience. When could it be? Could it be a month or two or five? Or a year? Or we should just euphemistically say that we are on an indefinite vacation. No gatherings, ceremonies, sports, conferences, meetings, work. It's terrible. How are we supposed to live? Like the early men? Even new movie releases are being rescheduled (Please spare money heist). Major year events cancelled. The height of it was when a coronavirus conference was cancelled due to coronavirus. What irony!
It's all messy..
Talk about football, everything was fine until Liverpool decided to win the league. Ugh! Scratch that, It's just a dry joke. Seriously, they have been unlucky with the EPL so far, they have seen themselves miss it by just a point and now coronavirus could potentially give a huge blow to their season. Why should it happen now, it has been 30 good years. Forget Liverpool, football as a whole is on hold. It is even worse than during the summer when you still get rumours of transfers and contract talks, now all you have is the doctor's report; another John Bull has been tested positive.
There are two sets of positive patients: Those who start experiencing the symptoms and fall sick, Those who are asymptomatic and don't show any sign of illness. For the former, they become aware of their condition and go into quarantine while being treated. They may recover and they may not. For the latter, it is the best thing that can happen to them because they have greater survival rate. But then they unknowingly infect other people and the cycle continues.
They say the fatality rate is 4.7% and it's a good thing but no one is talking about the infection rate, it is alarming, incredibly. Seriously though, the fatality rate is good. Imagine if it were at 20% or about 50% like ebola, that could mean the end of the world. Yeah, we could have another black death on our hands. But I don't still know, is it just like an herd thinner? Taking only those with weak immune system. Or some are just unlucky, to be sick at this time when they could still recover. It is not what we want still.. No one wants to see his/her loved one dead.
I don't know how far we'll go, I don't know when this will end but what I'm sure of is that it is not anytime soon. About 400k plus are still infected and I'm utterly convinced that these people will still continue infecting others. It's bad enough but like I said earlier, it will only get worse. It's a respecter of nobody and we may see popular figures die. How do we cope?
How We Are Dealing With It in Nigeria
In Nigeria here, I took a 6 hour journey back home before everywhere was placed on lockdown and I was shocked by what I saw. I passed right by the place where the index case visited and a lot of people were moving around without protection. Even close to Lagos, it is like one in a hundred, those who wore face masks. They don't know how real this stuff is and how terrifying it can get. Those who did still did it carelessly. Touching their face masks with their hands at will. Don't they know that if the face masks had protected them from the virus, fiddling with it carelessly had defeated the purpose?
Okay. It was all a joke but now we have 111 cases. That's a sudden jump from the 20 it was just about two weeks ago. I fear there are a lot of asymptomatic people infecting othere unknowingly. I also fear that people here are not properly informed, they rely on WhatsApp broadcasts and baselees rumours of the virus not being able to survive in hot regions or not affecting a black man or chloroquine being the cure. I don't know if we'll have another Italy on our hands and when activities here will return back to normal. Our president finally addressed the nation after a lot of pressure and he barely scratched the surface. He only said things we already knew and then announced a total 14 day lockdown of three states.
Everything we have ever done has led us to this very point we are now. Figuring out the next step towards solving the problem is one of the many ways forward. It has been hellish for the lot of us holed up in our houses without much of a choice. Bears semblance to a zombie apocalypse where you just have to run away from everything.
We could trade blames.. We could call the virus a citizen of a country by emergence. Ah! We could blame some set of people's choice of meals but then there's this talk of the universe checkmating the earth's population every once in a while in its own little way. It's just a talk, just like the lots of them about the virus, all of which are driven by uncertainty.
All Images were sourced from Pixabay