Dear Coronavirus Disease 2019,
Perhaps I should address you in your nickname – COVID-19, as you are the one superstar that by now there should not be anyone hasn’t heard of you and your accomplishment unless they are living under the rock or the Antarctica while having no signal on their phone for the past 3 months. I am writing this merely to bring remembrance for your ever existence and remind myself how vulnerable mankind are.
You started moving stealthily in China, invading people’s households and when you made it in front of people’s doorstep, you latch onto people’s unwashed hands, faces and finally made a decision of staying inside our vital machine to keep us breathing. Inside the cosy space you reside, you started treating our body like some kind of playground, treating our immune system as a joke to laugh at, people started falling acutely ill. Looking at your travel history, you have travelled quite some distances (actually all 7 continents except Antarctica), and we were all overwhelmingly surprised and being caught off-guard by your amazing travel. Starting off in China and you have made your mark around the globe.
People looked down on you at the beginning, politicians think you are merely just your close cousin (seasonal flu). Yet, you proved us all wrong as time goes by. World leaders are taken aback and still scrabbling to find a method to stop you from infecting more people; businesses and stores are shut infinitely to minimise interaction in any form; hospitals are flooded with fearful people who suspect they have been visited by you and the skyrocketing number of patients trying to kick you out of their once healthy bodies; exhausted front-line medical staff battling every second to help each patient to get back on their feet. On the contrary, it seems that you are not slowing down the pace while you storm through every aspect of our lives.
Countries are experiencing unprecedented lockdowns, closing down their borders including my birth country. I was just having a call with my Granny and like many other families in the world, we can only resort to technology to keep each other updated. Besides thinking of having them around myself when I am back in town, I am worried about them as the number of infected cases spike in Malaysia and can’t even begin putting myself to think the consequences of any of my family members catching you, COVID-19. My heart sunk when imagine someone loses their senior family member because of this outbreak and not being able to stand beside them while he breathed his last.
Dear COVID-19, the society we built might be flawed, the environment might have been better without capitalism; however, we are learning from our mistakes and this is certainly the worst warning issued upon us in decades. We might wrong you, but the consequence you brought is enough to shake us down to our last bit. The world needs you to stop and we just want the world to be a safe place to live.
Regards,
Someone from 2020