Treading slowly on the treadmill almost four months since I last used it in a fitness centre, I was just remembering my biology class lesson about British naturalist Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the famous line associated with him — survival of the fittest! Fearing an enemy around in Covid-19 pandemic, which indeed is, given the worldwide toll, we got holed up in our bunkers (homes) and those who couldn’t manage fought it on the streets against it brazenly. Some perished, some survived!
All through the hour-long fitness regime, my mind was occupied with what if I carry from here something, which I had avoided so far. Will my friends and family be safe if I meet them after regular gym? Not sure how many times I used the sanitiser before touching any equipment. Is this what we are up to? Or is this the “survival of the fittest”? It was almost like travelling in a train with an unseen bomb. How long can we take it? Should I fight or get holed up again? All this kept me engaged. And then I realised that the threat of the virus has entered our mind, and just not the body.
The time is now to change gears of prevention and sanitation levels against the virus surrounding us. Fresh waves of virus are resurfacing from the areas it originated, including China and East Asia. Most mass positive cases are being reported from places with maximum public interactions like temples, which opened recently, religious and social congregations, including marriages and festivals, which have just begun this week. India’s busy festival calendar, which will end only with the New Year revelry, calls for strict monitoring, self-restraint and also learning from each other’s experiences to avoid the pandemic.
In one single day at Tirupati Temple opening, nearly 750 people got tested corona-positive. This speaks about the threat ahead and pushes us to do more, even if it requires a bit of learning on the web to see how the best of practices are keeping countries like New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam in “safe zones”, but what is making the US still a risk zone? In the last two days, in a district in Atlanta, schools have reported coronapositive cases, as a result nearly 1,200 students and staff members have been ordered to quarantine. The alarming trend is across the US and schools are shutting down again until 31 August. In India, already the debate is on to manage classes and semesters, including Boards and top competitive exams. Can we survive the pandemic while we don’t let academics fail and the learning process deprive the students? Imagine there are lakhs of pre-school waiting to hear and learn the first alphabet. Can they wait endlessly? No. We must take cue from history, including the two World Wars and the pandemics, including the Spanish Flu, to learn how our previous generations survived and through their resilience built the new world.
We can’t let corona off our radars, but we also can’t let it overwhelm our lives even if the vaccine is a possibility only towards the end of 2020. Fight it with fitness, but as a smart athlete, who is well informed about the competition. Your competition is to survive against the pandemic, which is the most lethal one so far in human history. But, the human mind has always triumphed and this time too it will make us survive all through, making Darwin’s words come true two centuries later!