Man harbors the enemy

THESE are trying times. Never was there a period in the history of humankind that we face an invisible enemy almost as invincible as the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19). The plague has traveled across the globe and infects people, rich or poor, black or white, men and women, young or aged.

No place on earth is so distant that the virus cannot inflict its scourge. Man with all his genius and hubris is helpless. Since the virus showed its toxic might in Wuhan, a progressive City in Hubei province of China, hundreds of thousands the world over had been found positive of the virus now known to us as Covid-19.

Scientists had given the virus its name, while incorrigible politicians envious of the progress and development of erstwhile backward China, dub it Wuhan or China virus. Earlier some unkind words and condemnation were written against China. We call it “sinophopbia”. And yet when the flu epidemic which emanated from the United States of America we never recalled calling it American virus.

Man’s insensitivity against fellowmen now translates into a worldwide plague. The world over we scamper for solutions. Months had elapsed yet even the most powerful and advanced nations have yet to discover a vaccine.

We had remained clueless until we discover that the cure is not in an elixir or vaccine but in prevention. It is keeping the man in his abode. Lockdown is the order because man, it was found out, harbors the invisible enemy. What a classic irony and a humiliating means to bring the proud man bending on its knees in compliance for its own survival.

China gave us the lesson: Test or observation, isolation, and tracing the contacts of an infected person. China’s triumph over the scourge is our own template.

Ergo, the lockdown and self-quarantine and other simple hygienic modes of discipline.