COVID-19: A CLARION CALL FOR WORLD LEADERS TO UNITE FOR THE SURVIVAL OF MANKIND

While the anxiety, panic, disruption of normal life, turbulence and chaos caused by the virus in sociological, psychological, physical health and economic terms has been unprecedented, it has opened many windows of opportunity too.

Coronavirus pandemic is likely to emerge as a watershed moment in the history of planet earth. It can either mark the end of a beginning or beginning of a new phenomenon in terms of human survival, depending upon how it is perceived and treated and what lesson human population draws from this outbreak. COVID-19, the short-form of Coronavirus Disease (2019) hit the globe with a bang emerging from Wuhan, the Central Chinese province of Hubei, in December 2019 and has since spread in more than 190 countries. The outbreak was recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March, 2020 and has so far affected more than 5 lakh people, resulting in more than 19,000 deaths and more than 110,000 recoveries. COVID-19 has so far had drastic health-related, sociological, economic, cultural and humanistic fall-outs in countries where the pandemic has spread.

In absence of a definite treatment modality like a vaccine, all across the world governments have been using the strategies of containment, mitigation and suppression against the disease recommending self-quarantine of the entire populations living in affected areas. Many countries including India have announced complete countrywide lock-down never ever witnessed in the history before. Many stock markets have taken a nosedive and tumbled to an all time low levels hitting the world economies very hard. It is hard to guess how long world will take to overcome the economic slump caused by the pandemic. While the anxiety, panic, disruption of normal life, turbulence and chaos caused by the virus in sociological, psychological, physical health and economic terms has been unprecedented, it has opened many windows of opportunity too.

One such window of opportunity has been that it has united the whole world on one issue of healthcare. Humankind has woken up to the hard realities of human survival and significance of universal healthcare in times to come. People and nations across the world could be seen collaborating, sharing resources, propagating solutions and promoting awareness related to the coronavirus disease. Whole world appears to have been united by this notorious virus. A time has come for the governments and political leaders all across the world to learn some hard lessons and take cues from the COVID-19 pandemic that has united humanity on just one issue of health. It is time for all of them to shun all regional, religious, sectarian, caste-based, creed-based, colour-based, hate-based, racist politics and join hands together to focus on some of the most intriguing global issues like ensuring universal health and education, tackling climate change, maintaining global peace, ensuring international security, poverty alleviation, overcoming food grain scarcity, curbing depletion of water resources; conservation of biodiversity, forests, environment and ecology; disaster prevention, mitigation and relief; disarmament of all nuclear nations, contributing towards strengthening national economies, dissolving international borders, abolishing dictatorships, promoting democracies and collaborating for a sustainable mutual progress, growth and development.

Let the COVID-19 be the game-changer and transformer of all equations on the surface of planet earth. This time entire planet earth seems to be sick and retreating at present. Let it recuperate and emerge as a much more powerful, mature, resurgent and resilient planet so that it sustains human life for a very long time to come. Let the world after COVID-19 be a different world altogether. Let COVID-19 dissolve our big fat egos and let us work for the betterment of humanity transcending our territorial boundaries and jurisdictions. This is the best gift and lesson that we can give to our progeny. Many existential threats are looming large on the human race and gaining momentum with each passing year in the twenty first century, some of whom include catastrophic climate change and collapse of ecosystems, artificial super-intelligence and the rise of robots, alarming threat of a nuclear warfare, threat of super-volcanic eruptions and devastating earthquakes, impacts of huge asteroids hitting hard upon the earth, biological and chemical warfare, pandemics, anti-microbial resistance and the emergence of incurable diseases. This is doubly aggravated by the threat of man-made disasters like manufactured weaponized, bio-engineered, bio-hazardous super-viruses and bacteria, nuclear terrorism, cyber crime, forest fires, satellite junk and outer-space warfare, water wars clubbed with alarming environmental break-down caused by a spike in carbon emissions, rapid melting of arctic ice, steady rise of global temperatures, erratic and extreme storms assailing coastlines etc. Only a strong, collective, pooled and united effort at the global level could help us find solutions to these emerging threats to the existence of mankind on the face of earth. 

There is dire need for a “Multinational Task Force for the Survival of Human Beings” at the global level where best minds and talents all across the world belonging to diverse streams of science, engineering, technology, humanities, sociology, commerce, economics, healthcare, management, psychology, earth science, agriculture and law could converge and sit across to draw a roadmap and action plan for tackling these potential threats and thereby effectively paving way for the survival of mankind. This task force may determine the level of existential threat posed by all these potential dangers, rate them on a scale of ten in terms of their severity and thereby prioritize their handling and management in an effective and fool-proof manner. Recommendations of the task force must be binding and mandatory to follow by all countries of the world. They should be made to sign a "Memorandum of Understanding" to honour and implement the recommendations and decisions of the task force in letter and spirit. Countries must also pledge to extend full support, cooperation besides necessary assistance in terms of finances, manpower, territory, machinery and other logistics required for the implementation of the agenda and action plan presented by the task force as and when required.

Coming back to COVID-19, it needs to be mentioned that COVID-19 has revitalized the scientific temper among the people at large who keenly studied each and every detail about the virus as well as the disease and on the basis of knowledge gained took commensurate steps for their own protection from the disease. Mosques, churches, synagogues, temples all around the world including  Masjid Al-Haram at Mecca, KSA, Vatican City, Golden Temple at Amritsar, Vaishno Devi temple at Jammu and the renowned Hindu temple at Tirupati have been locked down for the time being and the worshipers are seeking remedies in medical science rather than spirituality for protection from the disease. This has substantially rekindled the subdued scientific temper among the masses and promoted their inquisitiveness about the etiology, pathogenesis, signs and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of the corona virus disease. This inquisitiveness and scientific temper needs to be harnessed and promoted further.

COVID has in more than many respects left a lot of room for the humankind to survive. Imagine if it had been water-borne, food-borne or air-borne, even locking ourselves up inside our homes would not have been safe and sufficient to survive. We would not have been in a position even to fearlessly eat food, breathe air or drink water as we are doing at present. Only thing it calls for is to abolish or minimize human and social contact which is not that impossible than not being able to freely eat food, breathe air or drink water. Food articles merely need to be washed and cooked thoroughly before consuming them. So let us take advantage of this window of opportunity and continue to stay home for our own survival. Alongside social isolation and home-quarantining, vigorous testing aimed at case tracking and clinical course detection of the disease has to go hand in hand for any tangible results to be achieved in terms of its control. All these measures will definitely help in flattening the curve of COVID-19 pandemic.