Who is afraid of the third wave?

 

Who is afraid of the third wave?

If one has 20 news channels available on TV network and on an average they dish out Covid-19 news, views, debates or other issues related to the pandemic three hours a day, simple logic says (even with channel-surfing), the viewers have absorbed nearly as much information about the pandemic during the two waves in the last approximately 500 days as the experts speaking on the issue know.

Not only that, those sitting in front of the TV also have thousands of anecdotes and so-and-so-was-telling-me-this-case stories to add to their already flooded storehouse of information.

When it all began, scared about my and my dear ones’ existence, I had only one opportunity to ask an expert how the virus was going to behave. This was around this time last year. Patiently, Dr Sunanda Gaur, MD, Director of Clinical Research Center, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, NJ said, “C -19 is a novel virus though its other cousin Coronas have existed. This is a new virus and the doctors are also learning what it is and the situation it is going to create.” She also said that little children, especially babies, were comparatively safer. The research that the C-virus lasting memory left behind sort of provides protection, may have some merit. The children experience cold, cough all the time and their immune cells may have some recent memory of that. 

Gauging the sound of fear in my voice she added, “No, you don’t know ahead of time who would be infected or not.”

(This was one of the earliest when an unhappy memer said {Translation} more than 800,000 innocent people have died of Coronavirus but none has returned as a ghost to torture Xi Jinping. This has made me lose faith in ghosts!)

And those with a literary bent of mind drew inspiration from the Bard's creations.

But my friends and I even enjoy the following kind.

The super-cautious or the healthy ones have been hit as hard as the careless or the weak ones. Besides, the virus has taught us about politics and economy, state support and healthcare, action and inaction and on personal levels- nutrition and immunity, humanity and helplessness or who are our close ones or else whose phone calls should from now on be left unpicked and unanswered.

As the population fell sick and the doctors and healthcare workers struggled, the rush for the vaccine worked like fertilizer for the creative brains who chose dark humour to express how the hospitals and the pharmaceutical companies were making hay under the bright summer sun. 

Fortunately for my readers, I cannot boast of having gathered any new or superior knowledge on the subject except this.

Meanwhile, several of the celebrities who had claimed to have been following tricks or taking various magic potions to keep the virus at bay, were defeated in the end and quietly retired to quarantine areas.These are just two of the scores of them.

My objective is to celebrate the cause of those who in spite of moments of despair and negativity or the days of pain or some permanent loss, continue to smile and go about their life as if the pandemic was a comma in their world and they fill the others with hope, love and positivity.

When I met a young relative earlier this week in Delhi, I was mentally struggling to phrase my condolence on her father's demise due to Covid, but she looked at me with her usual bright eyes and radiant smile and during the course of the evening narrated such interesting stories about him that slowly I felt I should not mourn his passing away but celebrate the life he had led and the beautiful memories he had left his family with. 

Naturally, I have no idea whether the third or further waves would come and how they would behave. But once bitten twice shy, the soothsayers continue to scare us with varied predictions.

For the rest, let us think of it in a selfishly optimistic manner- going by the calculation that a pandemic struck after a century, once this number 19 gets weak, our children and grandchildren and even some great-grandchildren will be spared the agony and heartbreak of going through similar times for several decades.. So why worry? Only the last word of caution...

Keep wearing a mask. If Yamadoot (messenger of Yamaraj, the god of Death) comes, he might not recognize the masked faces and leave them on the earth but instead pick up the unmasked faces to make up for the number or else…

(Translated)Today in the market, a woman caught hold of my hand and asked, "Hey listen, shall  I buy jackfruit? Will you be able to cook it?"

When I removed the mask from my face, she looked at me and shyly said, "I wonder where he (the husband) has gone! He was wearing a similar mask."

Therefore I warn you-The danger is not yet over. Stay home, stay safe... 

                                                                                                  -Anupama S Mani