Twelve lessons to learn from the global pandemic

In my secondary school days, whenever a team is losing on the field of play, the message from its fans is always cryptic – ‘if you miss the ball, don’t miss the leg’. Now that Covid-19 seems to have levelled humanity, the widened gulf between what is and what ought to have been is ever obvious. If we miss the fact that humanity is one, we should not miss the salient lessons.

The first lesson is that for all our boasts, humans are tenants in this planet, they may be in control, but they are not in charge. When it comes to pandemics, an invisible virus could control the amalgamation of the strongest military might in the universe.

Lesson number two is that the global economy is as strong as the next pandemic thrown at it. Since nobody knows when, where or how the next one would be no country or leader should boast of their effective planning or robust economy.

Home cooked meals are not out of fashion. Every human should learn how to cook. A home-cooked meal remains the safest and perhaps the healthiest meal in times of crisis. While there is no evidence of food transmission of the Covid-19 virus, it has brought down eateries and cast doubt on the safety of outsourced meals.

In choosing a life partner, couples should make rational choices. It is often said that the wedding ring is the smallest handcuff ever made and that people should wisely pick their prison mates. Post isolation reports from China indicated a higher divorce rate. It is tasking to be locked down with someone with whom you share little or no interest, it wears out intimacy and increases tension.

Life itself guarantees nothing and the search for wealth is the real chasing after the wind. Health is to be preferred to material wealth any day. As the global financial market tumbled, paper-wealthy individuals realised how ephemeral wealth is. As every asthmatic knows, material wealth means nothing when you’re gasping for oxygen.

Covid-19 is teaching lessons about governance and accountability. For the electorate, it is important to vote for people with plans, vision, mission and eye for the common good. Suddenly, those who had access to luxurious planes and the best hospitals were forced to make do with only what is available in their locality. While it is true that even in a lockdown, an emergency room queue prioritizes the needs of the affluent, it does not guarantee them life.

A functional nation works for everyone. When elected officials serve the people well, they inherently serve themselves.

There is a lesson in the universality of humanity. Colours, races, regions and religion are adjectives we invented for spatial distinction; when the come comes to become, death and diseases do not respect boundaries. In the race for the preservation of life, a Christian could be saving the life of a Muslim and the life of a Buddhist could be in the hands of a Sikh.

Developed and developing, another qualifier we often use is fluid when we are confronted to the same problem. Covid-19 was heavy on developed as it was on developing nations. Brown Cuban medical professionals were the first to fly in to rescue the Italians. The Cubans are communists while the Italians are predominantly Catholics. Italy’s European neighbours and American friends had their hands full and also needed help.

In a pandemic, age and health status could both be liabilities or/and assets. Being old and wrinkled does not guarantee life and being young does not imply exemption from death. While mortality is higher among older people, and those with pre-existing medical conditions, the young have been known to succumb to the virus. In Italy, a 103-year old survived the attack while supposedly healthy sports stars succumbed.

Knowledge is at our fingertips, but ignorance and fear respects no boundaries. A man in Arizona died leaving his wife in hospital after they self-medicated on Donald Trump’s presumptive touting of the use of chloroquine. Nigeria’s public health officials had to issue a statement after people were being sent to ER from chloroquine poisoning resulting from self-medication. Across the globe, vitamin and mineral sales surged as people attempted to ‘fortify their immunity’ by loading up on multivitamins. Traditional herbal concoctions surged even though there are no scientific evidence that any of these things actually work.

Science and religion are not necessarily parallel lines. Each has its place in our world. Faith has been found to improve immune functions while excessive knowledge could lead to anxiety or even hysteria. Where both are in reasonable symbiosis humanity benefits. Where one is elevated above the other, it could result in dire consequences. The foundation of medicine is in religion but dogma has pushed people into mass suicide.

At the end of it all, Africa needs a reliable census, a social security system and proper planning among other things. Self or social isolation has been most difficult where a sizeable number of people are not captured in any token government palliative. Lockdowns don’t work where people’s lives depend on getting to search for their daily bread. For most people, staying at home is like dodging an irate driver only to be tossed under a moving train.

If there is a future, when established societies take pre-emptive measures, Africa should learn to start its journey early at dawn and to move with good speed.