Smallpox pandemic, photo credit: the Social Historian
It's clear and obvious that today's younger generation has 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, about 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 about whether people are bitterly complaining
about measures to avoid the spread of the coronavirus as a loss of freedom. Decades after Germany was divided into 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, and 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 the pandemic
are not only technological or medical, but also quarantine and avoiding social
gatherings.
Hanged African-American woman
Thousands of people have died 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.