[COLUMN] The virus ‘has taken much from us’
Covid-19 has shattered our livelihoods, tortured our aspirational dreams, crippled our tenacious endeavours, and ruined the eminence of our shared humanity writes Elvis Masoga.
Ferocious, calamitous, apocalyptic, monstrous, destructive, horrendous and repugnant are the most befitting descriptions to characterise the terrifying brutality of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A few years ago, no one could have predicted the crippling devastation that would be inflicted by the virus. In March 2020 there was an educational advertorial which was broadcast on television and radio stations across the world. In this piece, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, dr Tedros Ghebreyesus makes this solemn caution: “This ferocious pandemic, Covid-19 is taking so much from us.”
Today, every human on earth will surely concur with Ghebreyesus’s painful observance that Covid-19 is taking so much from us. First reported in China in November 2019, this monstrous pandemic has ravaged the global economy, shattered millions of business entities, and claimed the lives of millions of people.
Millions of jobs and economic sources of livelihoods have succumbed to the dreadful brutality of the deadly pandemic. To date, almost every person on earth has lost a close family member – mother, father, grandma, grandpa, son, daughter, uncle, aunt – to the deadly pandemic. The sheer annihilating ferocity of the pandemic has been visited mostly on the elderly and persons living with chronic medical ailments. The pre Covid-19 world that we have known for ages has miraculously vanished into the wilderness. A new dangerous world, full of viral terror and infectious monstrosity, has emerged in the ghastly form of the Coronavirus. To date, nearly 200 million people worldwide have contracted the novel Coronavirus and about 4.2 million humans have died as a result of the monstrous pandemic.
In South Africa, the pandemic has claimed the lives of over 72 000 citizens, and over 2,4 million people have contracted the novel Covid-19 nationally. Over 2 million citizens have already lost their jobs as a result of the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic. Thousands of businesspeople have seen their enterprises faltering and collapsing due to the pandemic-induced lockdowns. Covid-19 has shattered our livelihoods, tortured our aspirational dreams, crippled our tenacious endeavours, and ruined the eminence of our shared humanity. But most certainly, we will resiliently prevail and emerge triumphant against this pernicious pandemic.
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