Living the life of a caveman was something our ancestors did in the pre-historic days, without cringing.
The life of a caveman was interesting, at least, from our perspective. They spent their leisure time in creativity. Surprisingly; necklaces, jewellery and musical instruments were the popular choices even in those days. They also spent quality time indulging in personal grooming. Hair braiding and painting their faces with natural pigments was everyone’s pastime. It goes to show life hasn’t changed all that much. All they had to worry about were nocturnal animals hunting for prey in the cover of darkness. Expectedly, our ancestors used to zealously guard their caves against such predators. Incidentally, the predators were such that they could be seen.
On the contrary, we have to guard ourselves against the unseen enemy. A virus is so minute that it can only be seen through a powerful microscope. We won’t even know we have been attacked until after a fortnight and by then we would have most probably passed on the infection to others. Therefore, it’s that much more difficult to guard ourselves against this spooky, unseen revenant.
Reverting to our primal solitarian instincts, in a world teeming with gregarious multitudes, to live in reclusion is something that has become a task of Himalayan proportions for most of us. It’s a learning curve for our generation and only time will tell the extent of our success against a rampant pandemic.
Incidentally, having modern day luxuries such as internet, smart TVs, smart phones and comfortable homes, we still find it difficult to stay at home for lengthy periods. This is utterly surprising and paradoxical, given our penchant for virtual social networking rather than socializing in the true physical sense. Despite knowing the consequences, we are unable to restrain ourselves from going out and mingling with people. This stems from an absolute belief and overconfidence that defies logic the accursed virus will not touch us. Or, is it that our minds rebel against restrictions imposed on us by the government or concerned local authorities? Whatever be the reason, the virus will not only touch us, but play havoc with our lives if we’re not careful and sensible.
Statistics taken from Worldmeters.info may show that all the COVID-19 cases are not terminal except for the fact that the virus does infect more people in less time and also has the ability to mutate further. Therein, lay problems. It can cause huge financial loss to countries and individual businesses because of its sheer infectious footprint.
Coronavirus Cases: 577, 495
Total Deaths ( at the time of posting this review) : 26, 447
Recovered: 129, 991
India’s economic shutdown is reflected by Moody’s forecast for 2020 on account of COVID 19. A downgrade of more than half from 5.4% to 2.5% shows that the virus has hit us where it really hurts. The losses can run into billions and trillions and we are not even counting the loss of lives, which should be our immediate priority.
The world, in general, has already paid a huge price because we failed to act responsibly and purposefully. Though not as deadly or life threatening as some of the past viruses like AIDS, EBOLA etc., COVID 19 has however caused great financial loss to every country as it’s extremely agile in spreading due to its infectious capabilities.
Beware! Don’t step out of your house if you want to breathe fresh air and stay clear of those damn bugs. More importantly, you’d be doing a great favour to your close family members by not infecting them.
No! The Earth is not under siege from Little Green Men from Mars and beyond. It’s just a single strand of RNA with an ability to infect, replicate and multiply inside the host that is busy bringing the entire nation, or rather, the entire world to its knees.
mbfarookh