COVID-19: World Perspectives

Yushin Son

Editor

Globally, the pandemic has taken its toll and people all over the world have been social distancing and wearing a mask, the people on TV claim. Don’t go outside, plead the anonymous comments online. How stupid can they be to be protesting the virus, twitter threads read. A woman scoffs. No, what idiots they are for not seeing the truth. The truth that the pandemic is all a lie and all a ploy for the rich and the ones in control.

She grabs her well-worn cardboard sign and heads out for the protest of the day. This one to protest masks, and good riddance, those things are stuffy anyway.

‘My body, my choice’ her sign reads. She thought herself clever for this sign in particular. The men up top have to respond now that she’s got this right in their faces. And she’s not alone either in her movement against the tyranny of masks and government plays. This is a numbers game and the people are going to win.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, across ocean and country, an Australian boy watches a clip of some American anti-mask protest. The white-colored blue light from his screen pasting his skin a pale shade of brown as he hits reply on yet another thread.

Hopefully shaming the protestors online will be enough to bring them off of their high horses. ‘My body, my choice’? Yeah right, infecting everyone around you with corona sure is your choice, but they sure aren’t your body. The 11th grader idly comments, “Some people need to think more about others than what they’re comfortable with.” The world has gone through enough and peoples’ lives have already changed with no chance of going back to how things were. Everything was changing and this is not the time for petty protests.

In a country even beyond the boy in distance from the protesting woman, another woman idly remarks as she watches the news report on the latest anti-mask protest happening in America, “...Complaining about having to wear them is like complaining about having to wear pants.” A questioning silence from her friend prompts the Austrian to explain. “Both are pieces of fabric you wear in public for the sake of others, but can’t wait to take off when you get home.” The two burst into laughter at the comment, at ease the worst of COVID-19 has long since passed their nation. Sure it exists, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the numbers the USA, Brazil, and other countries have been reporting. But even with the lower numbers peoples’ lives have changed over the span of the year because of Corona. No one’s unaffected.

In contrast, an English man, a lecturer, watched as numerous men and women travel up and down the main roads by his home. When looking at the general public’s response was to COVID in his area, it’s like “people don’t take it that seriously anymore [since] they are [only being] passively encouraged by the government since no punishment can be levied.” It’s as if almost nothing has truly changed since the beginning of the pandemic. He doesn’t approve, but he somewhat understands their actions and thought processes of “only needing to ‘go through the motions’ of precaution.”

The cynic in him seethes.

He could go on an endless tirade in regards to his thoughts, his students could attest, but he has seldom had the chance with the online lessons and somewhat stricter schedules and regulations surrounding online school. However, when a student asked for his opinion in regards to the pandemic and the preventative measures, he first responded with a short summary of his thoughts, “COVID or another pandemic was bound to happen” anyway and that “the preventative measures taken are all very haphazard with no global or even national unity amongst many countries.”

It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? It always comes back to politics and the economy. The numbers games. What a laughable conflict people have chosen to concentrate on. It’s simply asinine to be conflicting with a problem as global as this.

Or at least that’s the case in first world countries.

A girl reads the news in solemn silence, it reporting higher mass family suicide rates than there has been for as long as she can personally remember and reminding the public the dangers of COVID-19 not for the first time that day. “Pakistan has many different classes but the majority of the people are illiterate or in poverty. Hence they don’t have any awareness towards such things. They don’t even know what a pandemic is obviously,” she explains. “Here we have a lot of diseases already, like polio, malaria, etc. So when the news first came that this virus was spreading, the country didn’t really take it seriously.” The fact that Ramadan and both Eids took place in the middle of quarantine certainly didn’t help either, especially when it came to the socially distanced animal sacrifices.

However, in Pakistan it wasn’t the virus that was killing the people, it was unemployment.

“Our PM was very against a full lockdown, he argued that the people would die of starvation if there was a full lockdown and the poor class also argued that if they caught COVID there at least was a chance for them to survive but was a lockdown they would surely die [because] they couldn’t earn enough to feed themselves,” she said.

Ultimately, as it stands, there’s no practical way all of the unemployed could be provided aid, in any country truly, and especially in Pakistan with its population garnering it the title of 5th largest nation in the world. It is simply unrealistic.

The likelihood of universal government support to sustain all unemployment caused by the pandemic is just about as realistic as a unified front in the face of the coronavirus. But this isn’t the time for conflicts or political agendas. This is a worldwide mega dilemma, and everyone is being affected by it. Everyone’s lives have changed because of this pandemic and maybe it’s high time the world came together for once.