Lockdown Diaries: Certainly, this isn’t the end of the world

The coronavirus destroys and kills, it’s there for all to see. The number of those who are infected is growing daily and more than 500 people have died from Covid-19.

The merciless virus is not only separating families because of a nationwide lockdown, it is also destroying the economies of countries globally.

South Africa is worse off because, before the virus outbreak, our economy was already like a person who is in intensive care, brain dead, just waiting for the family (or Moody’s) to switch off the machine and let go.

But I’m not telling you anything you don’t know already.

So, let’s look at the bright side. We are up against an invisible man, but we are winners. We may look weak and discouraged, but the fact is, the world will beat this virus.

Yes, the invisible man has taken over the world and forced us to be confined to our houses. He defied the constitutions of countries; he took our right to mingle freely in the streets, among others.

But no matter how dangerous he is, he will not floor us because the world has experienced this before. Pandemic after pandemic have hit humankind – and we have risen up every single time.

Conspiracy theories, I hear you say. Not at all, just plain history telling the tales of survival.

In 1889, the world experienced a pandemic called the Russian or Asiatic flu, which wiped out over a million lives. A 2005 genomic virological study says “it is tempting to speculate” that the virus might have been not actually an influenza virus, but human coronavirus OC43.

In 1918, the world experienced the worst pandemic yet: the Spanish flu. Of all the people walking the earth, a third – 500 million – was infected.

The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide. Control efforts globally were limited to nonpharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.

Sounds familiar?

Then, in 1968, another attack by the invisible man, this time called the Hong Kong flu. He killed between one and four million people.

Now we face him in his new mask: the coronavirus. And, believe it or not, it certainly will not be the end of the world. We will stay standing and one day proudly know: we were making history.

Anthony Magampa.

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