Covid-19 pandemic and the misunderstood metric

As we all know, it has been almost eight months since theCovid-19 pandemic has taken charge over us and made our life miserable. Fromleading a normal lifestyle to a lifestyle where wearing a mask and sanitizingof hands is the new normal that has added up in the list. Two months oflockdown to curb the disease in the initial stages did not prove effective andthe virus eventually spread. We had never imagined that one virus would keeppeople away from their family and friends when one needs them the most. All theauthorities and people are still clueless on the spread of the virus all overand till now no medication or vaccine has been found to treat it. The virusdoesn’t seem to leave any stone unturned that it even affected our economy sobadly. With almost two months of complete lockdown in the country with all theindustries and people’s movement curbed and the economy also took a hit. “Noone could stop the world” was once a saying until the Covid-19 pandemic.

Goa is a small state with a 1.5 million population and weare leading as far as the spread of the virus is considered as per millionratios, which seems to pose danger to all of us. It looks like people are leastbothered about getting infected with Covid-19 as they happen to just disobeythe guidelines set by the authorities. One of the reasons why Goa is known isfor the fish and it is also the staple food of the state that people crave for,hence social distancing at markets at peak hours is just a myth and not areality that we should take it into consideration.

In spite of the hike in cases every day where we registeraround 700 cases a day and on an average 10 deaths in 24 hrs which is analarming rate. With cases increasing on one side and economic activitiesstarting again it’s our utmost responsibility to take precautions at all times.Blaming the government or authorities is not ideal when we fail to follow theguidelines laid down by them. 

The virus has affected the lives of mankind that it’sdifficult to even earn a decent living for many. With economic activitiescoming to a standstill during the lockdown, people have gone almost bankruptwith no signs of income, but more expenses. To get back the economy on track,the authorities have given a green signal to a few activities to start withproper health protocols and guidelines. As we say the damage has already beendone and once the damage is done it’s difficult to put back things to normalsoon. With economic activities now on there was hardly any business that peoplecould take up as the fear in the minds of people constantly remains.

During the lockdown, there was hardly any transportationhence there was very little environmental pollution. Many of us have also seenthat our nature was healing to a great extent with human beings caged insidetheir homes. Nature that was being burdened with a lot of artificial or we cansay man-made elements that were harming nature were stopped completely and itwas free and could breathe peacefully, while human beings were under the threatof the virus. Earth was healing after decades of damage done by anthropogenicactivities causing degradation to the natural health of mother earth. Thepandemic shows us how nature was suffering and suffocating as a result of humanactivities.

Now since everything is coming back to normal, we seem to begoing back to our same old ways without having learned any valuable lessons. Wehave been killing our nature like anything just in the name of development.Concretization by cutting down trees and mountains just for some big projectsis the new trend that has started. Concretization at a wide range has begun tokill the ecosystem and natural beauty. If this continues then we are not farfrom another pandemic that will soon hit us hard and this time with more damage.Development is needed but with more of preserving and sustaining the naturalecosystem. Preserving nature and its natural beauty can help us a lot in manyways as far as health-related things are concerned and help us conserve ourmother earth for future generations.