Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the Question for the Human Conscience

Coronavirus Covid-19 has begun his frightening career in Wuhan state of China late last year, and in a short period of time he turned to become the central attention of the whole world and prime headlines of the global mass media and a panic alarm to the all quarters such as country leaders, government officials, major global industry players, financial markets, banks, and even the general public regardless of their gender and age.

The pandemic outbreak that had the world besieged to seek shelter within the four walls, imposing quarantine or self-isolation on half of the earth’s population and destabilized the global order of social, economic, political, cultural, religious and even military functions.

Everyone was quick to take precautionary and preventive measures, and launched strategic initiatives to confront the pandemic of the era that is being described as ‘devastating pandemic’ or ‘enemy of mankind’ by many social medias users. The pandemic which has raised fear, terror and unusual panic among mankind across the globe very easily without contest had won the title of the ‘enemy of mankind’ and the ‘pandemic of the time’.

Let’s review briefly some of the outstanding performance and characteristics that attained Covid-19 the honour of enemy of humanity:

First: It is transmitted rapidly between humans without distinguishing between the rich and the poor, whites and blacks, through speaking or breathing and direct encounter.

Second: It spreads everywhere and in every direction, regardless of geographical and environmental location, whether it is in a developed nation or underprivileged one.

Third: It can persist on inanimate objects for a long time, and affects a human when he touches or approaches it.

Fourth: He proved his ability to kill within a short period of time and also proved non responsive to all advanced medical innovations to confront him.

Fifth: He cannot be seen with the naked human eyes and can remain invisible for almost 2 weeks, and doctors and researchers have not yet discovered any vaccine or treatment to defeat it.

These are some of the features that qualified him to win the prize of the enemy of humanity as many titled him, and the world today coexists with him, like it or not .

Coronavirus within a short period of time managed to mobilize the armies and defence secretariats of the world, and governments have harnessed all their capabilities and abilities to limit and stop its outbreak, lockdown its borders and airspace, and declared state emergency situations and the movement control order throughout the country, in order to confront this epidemic, a newcomer, which leaves behind massive unprecedented damage in the history of the economies of countries and global stock exchanges, and threatens to bankrupt major multinational companies and giant progressive projects.

Henry A. Kissinger former US secretary of state said in an exclusive article in The Wall Street journal titled: The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order,
“When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus. To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done.”

Yes, Coronavirus is proceeding at an unimaginable pace, catching its prey, without specifying the area of its operation, date of operation end or if there is a possibility of one side cease-fire in the near future. It is marching forward, spreading terror and claiming more lives every day and afflicts more of humanity and all advance technologies and civilized development ( contemporary human pride) was simply defeated by an unidentified individual called Coronavirus.

Let us pause for a while, to review and post a question; did humanity witness and come across such a thing like what Corona is doing now, killing thousands and effecting millions?

Many of us very easily response to this question with ease, in fact many of us can even relate and link events that happened, many of us coexisted with these situations, ending up with the loss of loved one, families and relatives, total destructions of all belongings and running around endless calamities of life within tents of refugees camps and bamboo shelters till today.

Epidemics, famines, chronic diseases, deadly poverty and civil wars killed millions in the dark continent ( Africa ) in Somalia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Uganda, etc.

Mass displacement, brutal massacres, genocide of innocent people, and arbitrary and ethnic cleansing, against Muslim citizens and violations of basic human rights and crimes against humanity in Asia, such as in China, Myanmar and India.

Millions of innocent women, the elderly, and children were killed in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and the Balkans in proxies and artificial wars, which caused deaths, wounded, widowed and orphaned large numbers of human beings, as a result of economic interests, power struggles, regional sovereignty between the world’s leading powers, keeping aside all declarations of justice and fairness between the countries, turned the region into a test ground of military weapons at the expense of the blood of the innocent.

Destruction of the economies of states and third world countries by imposing economic sanctions, diplomatic boycott on baseless accusations and hypotheses of supporting and financing terrorism, without referring to the Security Council, demonizing images of official authorities and elected representatives and leaders by misusing the role of International Court of Justice with delusions of baseless crimes in realities.

In the Middle East, the just Palestinian cause, and the Palestinians’ right to their homeland is violated, with the direct interference of the world’s power, offering open unconditional support to Zionist Israelis settlers and allowing them to kill Palestinians, usurping their property and land has become a regular occurrence.

Control of the oil rich and other natural resources countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria by balance sharing between world power, despite the bloodshed of innocent people, and by creating political and sectarian unrest among the one nation, which became clear conspiracy to everyone.

The prestigious daily the guardian once published an article of John Gray he said: “No one pretended the first Gulf War was fought to combat terrorism or spread democracy. As George Bush Snr and John Major admitted at the time, it was aimed at securing global oil supplies, pure and simple. Despite the denials of a less honest generation of politicians, there can be no doubt that controlling the country’s oil was one of the objectives of the later invasion of Iraq. “

From this quick review we can conclude, without a doubt, that the above mentioned events claimed the lives of millions of innocent human beings and enormous devastation and destruction caused by the irresponsible and aggressive human policies against humanity.

Yet they are holding the flags of human rights, democracy and false freedoms and equality among humanity. The majority of the world plays the role of spectators in front of this tyrannies and unable to raise a strong voice against state sponsored violations .

Let’s return to our subject, we can distinguished Coronavirus from its previous sisters pandemic or diseases with several criteria and characteristics among them:

First: Coronavirus chooses its targets without distinction of religion, colour, and race of the individual.

Second: Coronavirus can hit multiple targets simultaneously, at multiple distances, and with high accuracy.

Third: Coronavirus does not abide or even morally obligated to issue a Security Council resolution that allows him to interfere in the affairs of others, and no one can file a complaint against him and request an emergency session to impose sanctions on him.

Fourth: Coronavirus is capable of bypassing all the latest air defence systems of today namely Russian S-400 and the American Patriot.

Finally: Coronavirus’s most preferred area of operations is the most advanced and developed countries, countries involved in spreading chaos between states, accused of spilling innocent blood, igniting sectarian and religious conflicts, creating disunity between people of one country and kill people based on race and religion.

So my appeal to our human conscience is to ask ourselves the following question:

Is it rational that a polite humanity continues to spread wars, conspiracies, hatred, assaults and wrongdoings against humanity, or is it unreasonable that a creature can attack and kill us again and again like the Coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak?

Abu Ahmed Farid
Farid_br@yahoo.com
Kuala Lumpur

* This represents the writer’s own opinion only it doesn’t necessarily reflect organizational stance.*