REFLECTIONS OF PAST TURBULENCE ON CURRENT GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS

Smallpox pandemic, photo credit: the Social Historian

It's clear and obvious that today's younger generation had never experienced such a destructive nature of a deadly, and prolonged disease, known as the coronavirus, forcing people to stay at home, with anxiety, fear, and unemployment. 



The current crisis of the coronavirus, pertaining to infection, deceased, and healing, seems to bring to mind the harsh and bitter experiences of victims during the first and second world wars. 

It also gives us a comprehensive understanding of the terrible times people went through, during epidemics, such as the Spanish flu, influenza, cholera, and other deadly pandemics.

People think their freedom has been taken away from them because they have been forced to stay at home, can't enjoy sports, visit the cinema halls, the restaurant, go to the football stadium and visit their loved ones. 

The question is do people have to be angry over measures that protect and guarantee their own safety against the deadly COVID 19? How honest and sincere are people? 

Let's begin to think deeply if people are bitterly complaining about measures to avoid the spread of the coronavirus as stolen freedom. Decades after Germany was divided East and West Germany, the iron curtain came tumbling down in 1989. 

The Germans were divided for 45 years and those trying to flee from the East to the West were shot down in cold blood.

Africans were captured and taken as slaves. Their homes were burned down, the people were divided and brutalized. The scars of colonialism and Apartheid, are still visible in Africa today.  After that Aids and Ebola have hit the continent killing thousands.

Captured African slaves were taken to America to work long hours in sugarcane plantations amidst hunger and poverty. Years after the abolition of slavery, African-Americans are still suffering.

Comparing those turbulence times to the current time of the coronavirus gives a better understanding of how people have suffered in the past and the most painful part which we can't ignore is that the emerged political crisis and pandemics were man-made.

The suspension of work and school activities ordered by the government is for our own good. The answers to controlling pandemic are not only technological or medical but also quarantine and avoiding social gatherings.

Hanged African-American woman

Thousands of people are dead because of the coronavirus. The world is bleeding and people are mourning, in a state of shock and despair. Yet, it's shocking to read negative comments from people who are happy that the COVID - 19 is killing more black people in the United States of America.

This is not a time to laugh at people because the coronavirus's impact has taken its toll on whites or a particular race. The disease is far from over, besides, no one knows if you are going to live today or the next day. 

People need to show love and care in these disturbing times not hate, discrimination, and racism. This is the time the world must come together as one until the right vaccines come to save the lives of people who are perishing because of COVID-19.