The danger of COVID is enhanced by the fact that no one is sure about the horizons. We could weather this current malaise if it clears up in say, 3 months.
6 months will be already too long but with everything surrounding this phenomenon, this year is certainly gone. Covid is likely to eat into next year but in a country like ours, with the non-investment in primary healthcare and now the community transmission of the disease in full swing, who knows where our luck will swing for 2021?
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Even elsewhere, everything points to a scenario where the panic around Covid will be impossible to reverse for the whole of next year. The focus will remain on the number of those infected since the beginning, and how many have died. This is why I argue that there may never be a good time to push back and try and rescue some of our normalcy. The figures will never look good as it keeps going up and up. What happens if this confusion eats up the entire 2021?
The fuzziness even from the scientific class is too much. No need repeating the issues here. No one is sure of anything really. But COVID is real. I fear sometimes that indeed life has been damaged. What if the disease can reinfect those who had earlier been infected and survived? No one is sure for now how that works. They say there are several mutations. I read an article that profiled 6 mutations. Is this a smart disease? Something carefully manufactured or something that some evil scientists are behind, ‘helping’ the world to tweak so that it may be effective by killing more people? Some of these scientists are not happy that millions haven’t died in Africa and I bet they will stop at nothing. It is good to express some level of cynism, not buy everything on global media hook, line and sinker. There is evil in this world. The times are terrifying. We hear that some ‘superior race’ people actually want global population to be pruned down massively and who is the weakest link that has to go; of course YOU black people, whoc are seen to be parasites, takers, a whole breeding lot who don’t add any value to the world. I hope we can see our nakedness. We better be cautious and not dismiss these ‘conspiracies’ off hand. The noose is closing around our African necks. Who will save society? The coming hunger is even likely to kill more people than the disease itself.
I have just looked at a document listing the number of bankruptcies in the USA since this started – Hertz, Brooks Brothers, Zara, Gold’s Gym, JC Penney, GNC, Nieman Marcus, Aldo – many companies that have been around for decades are gone. In a country like Nigeria no one documents it when a company padlocks its main entrance and the owner walks away with the keys. If we bother to do the statistics, already millions of companies have closed up here, and tens of millions of our people are just aimlessly roaming about, jobless… God help us
Two things; revolutions are easy to speak about, but in reality extremely messy. Second, they say a revolution throws up new oppressors. So it is important to consider what might happen if indeed we get to the point where people have to go on the streets. The situation is likely to get quickly out of control because of prevailing circumstances with hunger and poverty – which will get worse. Government is also likely to respond very harshly as its available resources keep thinning out. It must be conceded that government is throwing out some initiatives to help the people through this period, but many will argue that there initiatives are way too small compared with the problems on hand. We need a big meeting or a continuous conversation on this. We have never needed to put on our thinking cap and come together for our own very survival than today.
I am afraid truly. Afraid because very few people that I know appear to be able to appreciate the enormity of what stares us in the face. Maybe my imagination is too wild. A lot of what is happening today is what I had agonized about as I threw tantrums at the beginning of this crisis. We need to be able to imagine it like a chess game where a phenomenon is leading us to. I charge those in government with this. In truth if they are honest, they will almost all resign because this is a huge blackhole. However, they can also dig in and buckle up. All of Nigeria’s resources must be mobilized from wherever they may be, to try and tackle this major crisis. If we sit idle, or act tentatively, and watch events morph the way they would naturally, then the above is the likely trajectory. If this happens it will not be ugly. But it has already happened. There is poverty, despair and despondency upon the land. Many more are dying of Covid than being reported, but many are also saving themselves at the grassroots. As we pursue the health challenges, we have developed a raging economic cancer. Will it eat Nigeria to death? Or will we be lucky and have remission?
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