What a turn life has taken for everybody on planet earth in the past 6 months! Meet-and-Greet conversations zoom in and zoom out of zoom boxes. Terms like COVID-19, Social Distancing, Contact Tracing, and Community Spread seem to overflow from our collective lexicon. And, what about our children! They seem to have woken up to a new normal. Closed schools, zero play dates, empty playgrounds–no real world connections to say the least, are some of the grim realities we never anticipated for our children. Then I think of the thing I don’t want to think about, the one that started it all—the corona virus.
With the width of 1/1000th of a human hair, the virus is a leveler, unlike any other that collective humanity has ever witnessed. Unflinching, unsparing—it doesn’t care whether you are rich or poor, dumb or smart, right wing or left wing. Summer, winter, spring or fall–season doesn’t seem to be the variable for this virus. Neither do antibiotics, or UV-light. And so, continues our wait for a vaccine. The mind ponders again: How safe or effective will a vaccine be for immunocompromised individuals? How long would its effectiveness last?
Also, interesting to note are the intriguing ways of the corona virus. It has taken its peek-a-boo with humanity to an altogether new level. It emerges, vanishes, re-emerges, and then starts all over again. Phew! You never know the friendly next-door neighbour with whom you exchange your weeklies could be an asymptomatic carrier. And who knows, what is holding you could be your strong immune system. Ironically, given the timing of the appearance of the symptoms (on an average, the symptoms are evident 5 to 6 days after one has contracted the infection) you could never tell whether “you are serving” or “being served” the pathogen.
So, the least we can do in the current state of affairs is to mask up. It is here we can collect some pearls of wisdom from the real life experience of my colleague from our office in Japan. White surgical masks are not new to the general population in Japan. During the flu season, the objective of wearing masks in Japan is a compassionate one, and based on the premise of politeness. She says, “In Japan, you use a mask when you are sick with the flu or hay-fever, and the sole reason you are wearing one is that you do not want others in your vicinity also to get sick. It is a polite thing to do.” No wonder, even though initially there was a spike in corona cases in Japan—attributed mainly to the poor social distancing norms followed at the country’s hot spot centres, the situation is much rosier now. Japan’s death toll per capita from the corona virus is now the lowest in the developed world. Of the many possible reasons listed, wearing face masks is one. Let us therefore, continue wearing masks and follow social distancing norms till a more concrete solution for the pandemic is ascertained.
Image Courtesy:
Background Feature Image: Mt. Fuji, Japan. Thanks are due to Mr Sayama for the beautifully taken picture.
Write Left Right 