Pakistanis and COVID-19
As we all know the whole world is dealing with a Chinese originated pandemic situation which has halted summits and sports tournaments worldwide. Put aside the international chaos it caused, this pandemic ‘COVID-19’ affected our domestic errands at halt too, such as education, trade, weddings (at huge extent), friends & family gatherings and off course outing and hangouts and all our errands which we perform in good old normal routines.
But first let’s discuss what this pandemic is? Where does it came from? What are it’s symptoms? How can we prevent it?
COVID-19 or better called as ‘Coronavirus’ is a new illness originated from Wuhan province in China that can affect your lungs, and airways inside body. It is caused by a virus called coronavirus. The main symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) include are high temperature and a continuous cough.
Health experts from WHO prefer that everyone must stay at home to help stop coronavirus (COVID-19) spreading. Wash your hands with soap and water often to reduce the risk of infection. You can usually treat mild coronavirus (COVID-19) symptoms at home with proper isolation. If your symptoms are severe, you may need medical care until you recover in medical facilities provided by government.
But as Pakistanis, how coronavirus has affected us?
We Pakistanis are a nation who loves to celebrate occasions and events such as Eid festivities, PSL matches, and eat outside with friends and family, play sports such as cricket and football, learn new things be it education or accepting other cultural influences and trends, travel (mountains in north or off roading in south) and off course shopping too.
Nearly whole world is practicing social distancing and isolation to curb of the spreading of coronavirus. Government imposed lockdown in Pakistan’s major cities, markets, offices, educational institutes and operations were called off. It was decided that employees will not be fired during crisis and will be given complete pays. Moreover, educational institutes were guided to start online class sessions. Only grocery shops, stores and pharmacies were allowed to open in certain hours.
But on the other hand majority of Pakistani nation wanted government to lift off necessary lockdown as it was affecting our already corruption-affected economy.
So, government eased down the imposed lockdown and allowed shops to open 4 days in a week. Then? What is happening now as the lockdown is eased?
Nearly all kinds of shops are now opening . Government and health officials advised people to follow SOPs, to go out only if necessary but visuals we see outside tell us very different story. It tells us that we Pakistanis aren’t afraid of this deadly virus. In fact, eid-shopping is very important for us, over expensive brands are selling their goods on sale so we need to hurry buying products as they will be used and flaunted in homes afterwards as we will be unable to celebrate Eid outside. The visuals suggest that we will prefer to die with this pandemic rather than getting bored in self isolation and social distancing at homes. Shopping alone is very tiring and is boring as there is always issue of choice so our markets are flooded with families including children and masks? No masks cause difficulties as weather is getting hot and they make us sweat a lot!
And we Pakistani people are extreme when it comes to religion. Mosques were advised to remain shut for crowds as SOPs can’t be followed and gatherings will spread this virus but our clerics saw this pandemic as infidel trap to halt Islamic operations. So they protested to open mosques for taraweeh salah which can be prayed at home too. and situation now is that only few mosques are able to follow SOPs given by government as others don’t have adequate knowledge and resources to do so.
What could we learn from mistakes of other nations?
I would like to highlight another point that as most of us already know the fact that Pakistan somehow was one of the late countries to be hit with the Corona virus and we already saw the mistakes which other countries made in dealing this pandemic. Such as European nations like Italy off course which firstly didn’t take any serious step as a precaution and didn’t educate its population about social distancing and SOPs. Spain on the other hand also neglected to establish and prepare its medical and health facilities to deal with infected patients who would come to seek medical help. If we give a glance to how United States of America dealt with this pandemic we will definitely get terrified by what it caused them, how the negligence of president Trump caused them the lives of people, jobs, and off course their economy! Many American analysts claim that Donald Trump was tipped with the fact there will be a great pandemic/virus that’ll be going to hit USA but he didn’t give attention to this intelligence info. After this when his advisors asked him to ban Chinese flights and imports he ignored that too, also when he was asked to generate funds for maintaining and equipping the hospitals and medical facilities to deal with upcoming number of infected persons, guess what? He ignored it too! Trump wasn’t ready to accept that the virus is contagious and carried on his election campaign and took all the measures of lockdown late that it caused USA its fortune.
We as a nation should support our government if it takes necessary steps to halt the further spread of the disease.
You may contact the writer at alihadi48@gamil.com
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