THE AFTERMATH OF COVID-19

For starters, not all of us have siblings who are doctors and who can give us a scare, time and again while providing authentic information about what really should be our priority points.

The first thing my brother, who is a doctor, told me today was that, it’s not the 21 day lock down that matters, it’s what we do on day 22.

So here’s what’s going to happen:

1. Like some people did during the Janta curfew, now the whole country is suddenly going to run out of their homes with the national flag, playing patriotic songs and shouting slogans like we’ve won a war and talking about how great of a nation we are forgetting that we have not completely eradicated the virus but merely tried to cut it down.
2. The so called highly educated people of the city are going to flood public places like cinema theaters, restaurants, malls, parks etc. exactly on day 22, because why not. They’re absolutely going to neglect the fact that they can’t altogether abandon social distancing and that the virus may still be out there, let’s hope not but one can never be too careful.
3. All the small and medium businesses, all corporate offices are going to start working on their normal scheduled time and if I may say, double shifts, extra hours to cover the leftover work of the lock-down period, hosting the employees at large to a possible contamination at large.
4. The people who have already left for their villages, example our house help or those who work for daily wages will now come back running to the city because of the bad economy and in hope to earn back a little of what they’ve lost. On optimistic grounds, even if one single person of the thousands is seemed to have mild symptoms or not tested and is still hosting the virus due to any reason of negligence or unavailability of infrastructure, now shall travel through a train/bus carrying another 50 people right into the city.
5. All means of public transport will now be over crowded to and fro throughout the country suddenly exposing loads of people to loads of possibilities of contracting the virus all over again.

I’m telling you exactly what’s going to happen on day 22, India is going to forget that we are in the middle of a pandemic, a damn global crisis and everyone is going to get back to their normal lives, leaving behind the masks, sanitizers and forgetting to maintain extreme personal hygiene because hey! We’ve found a cure to the virus, we stayed home for 21 days, now let’s forget it and move on.

This is the reason there are high chances of a second wave of the virus spreading like wild fire into the country. If you don’t believe me, you can check the statistics of this virus called the N1H1 which arose in 2009, where in the exact same thing occurred. As soon as it was contained and people went back to their normal lives, there was a second wave.

So technically 21 days of Quarantine is going to be absolutely useless we educate the people about what exactly is to be done on day 22 because otherwise there is a possibility of another lock-down being declared. We definitely don’t want that.

So here’s what we can do:

1. We act wisely and use our common sense by doing the most basic things; don’t go partying on day 22; try to follow all the instructions you did for the last 4 weeks to the maximum extent; please don’t forget, this is not the end of the virus, this is only the beginning of the end.
2. We educate and spread awareness about the after effects to people who do not have access to resources and information by sharing this article.
3. We use this as an official petition urging the government to take into consideration the above points before announcing any further instructions after the lock down is over.
4. We persuade the government to let the lock-down downsize in separate stages :

• For example from day 22 say for another week only the essential services shall be open like banks, grocery stores and the frequency of public transportation shall be minimal
• In the next week the frequency can be increased after monitoring the effects of the spread and the public shall be urged to avoid assembling in large numbers and practice social distancing
• All public places like theaters, malls, parks shall be the last priority to be open for the public.

If we genuinely understand the seriousness of the issue and come together as a single voice in these times of crisis, we can make a huge difference in the lives of 1.3 billion Indians.

I’m just a regular kid who’s paranoid about the virus and who really wants to make a difference.

Thank you.