Prevention… The cure of all ailments!
“Failing to prepare is indeed willfully preparing to fail”
December 27 is now a globally acknowledged day for reminding ourselves to prepare for any kind of global crisis. For where Covid19 has wreaked havoc upon our daily lives, it has also unearthed human potential for tackling such situations; which is sometimes heroic in proportions while at others is simply too despicably sad to be even considered human at all. Consequently, this day presents us with an opportunity to realize how can we built up our potential to survive any such future crisis ‘and try, to the best of our abilities, to avoid being caught off guard by such global calamities.
Academically, when an epidemic crosses the borders of a country it can officially be considered a pandemic. Historically, for one reason or another pandemics such as Covid19 have surfaced from time to time, leaving behind irrevocable losses and changes which shaped humanity’s progress and the evolution of the world as we know it today. Let us consider the following timeline of these pandemics to recognise their recurrent pattern as well as to acknowledge the necessity of encouraging one another to adopt healthier lifestyles, of addressing political prejudices, socio-economic complications and self- induced dogmas which end up paralyzing our reaction reflexes.
Year Pandemic
430 B.C Athens
165 A.D. Antonine Plague
250 A.D Cyprian Plague
541 A.D. Justinian Plague
11th Century Leprosy
1350 The Black Death
1492 The Columbian Exchange
1665 The Great Plague of London
1817 First Cholera Pandemic
1855 The Thirid Plague Pandemic
1875 Fiji Measles Pandemic
1889 Russian Flu
1918 The Spanish Flu
1957 The Asian Flu
1981 HIV/AIDS
2003 SARS
2019 COVID-19
Whenever any of these pandemics have struck, they not only caused humanity to sustain a serious loss of life but also compelled it to restructure the political and socio-economic dynamics of the entire world. As a result, it should be noted that such calamities are not only overwhelming tests of our survival but also a trial of human resilience. They oblige us to re-evaluate and reprioritise various aspects of our lifestyles.
For instance, nutritious diet and a healthy lifestyle which nurtures natural immunity to different diseases has now been established as the only effective defence against Covid19. Which goes to show that we need to abandon our generally habitual aversion to physical workouts and unhealthy, junk food centred eating habits.
Also, the relentless onslaught of Covid19 adversities have forced us to realise some really sad social realities. Most of which revolve around how mere changes in work out and dietary habits would be severely insufficient for the lower strata of society to develop its immunity against Covid19 or for that matter any other disease. The socio-economic complications we have experienced this year are enough to jolt any conscientious person into action for the welfare of those whose daily concerns are to provide one-time meal for their families, whose overwhelming anxiety is the fact that if any of their loved ones gets infected by Covid19, they would not have enough resources to manage any kind of treatment at all. On the other hand this same pandemic has made us witness those amongst us whose hearts have lost their humanity to the sure but silent inception of materialism; so that for them people and their problems are merely opportunities to be capitalised upon for their own monetary gain. Consequently, our global society need a political and social awakening to the cage like predicaments of the poor and to the predator like brutality of those who pray on those predicaments, to severely take them to task and humble their overreaching natures which belittle humanity’s suffering.
In addition to these changes we also need to get rid of our prejudices against other nations. Conspiracy theorists would have us believe that this pandemic is a bio weapon of a powerful nation to dominate all other’s in the international arena while others insist on its being a consequence of a single nations eating habits. What We forget is that regardless of its origins, the fact remains that the world as we knew it has been crippled by this pandemic which we need to face together as a single entity. For such pandemics have ravaged human existence throughout history and have always created a trail of sorrow and suffering, death and ruin in their wake. It is indeed only by setting aside our national prejudices and religious biases that we can truly recognize Covid19 and any other pandemic as a universal disease that plagues us all and has infected our entire existence.