For us as students, 2020 must be the worst year that we have lived till now. Isn’t it ridiculous how the global superpowers around the world showed off their ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads with capabilities to render the earth lifeless, trying to be the most powerful ones, where even a microscopic virus can lock us all inside our homes? The spread of the novel coronavirus is just an example of how small we are in front of mother nature, whom we have been exploiting for decades.
If we are well versed in history, we might know about the 1720 plague in France, killing about 1 lakh people at that time, the 1820 Cholera in West Bengal, which too took more than 1 lakh lives. In 1920 came the Spanish flu, which affected around 27 % of the world population, taking the lives of approximately ten crore people throughout the world. And now, in 2020, we are living amidst the Coronavirus pandemic that has already infected more than four crore people, leaving more than 11 lakh people dead around the globe.
Does the trend mean we need to face a global pending after every hundred years, like what humanity has seen during the past three centuries? Being the millennials of the 21st century, we cannot just leave everything on stats and superstitions and sit with folded hands, waiting for the pandemic to end, while expecting another one in the next hundred years. As humans, we are committed to learning throughout our lives, and that is what makes us different from the rest of the living species on the earth.
But what can a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of more than a million people can teach us? To begin with, the pandemic didn’t just emerge from nowhere. It was the combined failure of mankind that has led to its rise and spread. And as we all know; failure is one of the greatest teachers that we can ever have.
- Individually we are fragile as a community, we are unbeatable.
Remember the time when the government imposed lockdown one after another, with strict rules so that nobody can go out on the streets? A Lion’s share of the citizens of India abided by the rules and stayed inside their homes. Analysts throughout the globe suggest that if the lockdowns were not imposed, India would have been a global hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic because of the high population density.
The results of the combined effort can easily be seen, as in a country of more than 138 crore people, around 75 lakh people are affected, which is a small fraction of the total population. If we did not unite to comply with the government rules at that time, the stats would have been very much different.
- Personal hygiene matters
Be frank with yourself, before the coronavirus pandemic did you take your hand hygiene seriously? If you think carefully, you will find many instances where you clean your hands with plain water before going to eat snacks like a packet of chips. After the coronavirus pandemic came into existence, people started to become extremely cautious about hand and respiratory hygiene, which show a rapid increase in the demand for hand sanitizers.
Even after the pandemic ends, the habit of carrying a hand sanitizer with ourselves and frequent sanitization of our hands would become a pretty common scene, which is indeed a great habit to develop.
- A massive section of the education and business can go online
One of the very few positive things that the coronavirus pandemic has taught us is that the business and education can go online without the need of the students and teachers to get together in a single classroom. With the Rapid growth of technology regarding online education and business, it can be assumed that more and more students would opt for online classes and distance education courses rather than physically visiting the university, which may be situated thousands of miles away.
Also, as work from home became more and more prevalent throughout the world, many startups would be encouraged to go online and promote work from home. Both online education and online business will save billions of dollars for millions of students and entrepreneurs around the world.
- Mental health should be taken as seriously as physical health
Before the pandemic, we all were constantly involved in a rat race without having the time for ourselves. The constant goal-oriented approach that we have adopted in the 21st century is making us human robots, continuously running towards a goal set either by society or by ourselves only. As the lockdown began, people were more at home, totally isolated from the external world, and that was the time when introspection began.
It was coupled with many other things such as procrastinating a hazy future, and economic instability that brought in anxiety and stress, and depression. For many people, it was the first time that they were facing such mental issues, and without proper treatment, it went to an alarming alarmingly high level. Tragically, in many cases, the affected person committed suicide, and as a result, the number of suicide cases rose exponentially over the past six to eight months.
As the stats are coming in front of the public eyes, people are now becoming more and more aware of mental health, which is indeed an appreciable thing.
