COVID is no respecter of persons
The dreaded coronavirus now christened by the World Health Organisation as COVID 19 and, given top billing on the nucleic acid molecule stage, branded a pandemic that might well prove the ‘Nigh, the end of the world is nigh’ prophets of doom finally right, is an arrogant sun of a gun who doesn’t give a dam whether you are rich and famous or just a down and nobody.
In its one virus Rambo style genocide attack on humankind, it has not only shown no mercy to its victims, mowing all in its pandemic path but it has shown its no respecter persons, not even the Almighty.
While infecting 125,000 humans so far with its virulence and claiming the lives of over 4,500, it has also laid low the British Health Secretary Nadine Dorries who made contact with COVID on Tuesday and immediately ran into a storm when the wife of a fellow MP Andrew Bridgen, publicly criticised Nadine Dorries for not informing health officials of contact with her husband. Brigden’s wife Nevena tweeted: Why did you not tell that you sat next to my husband in a tea room? I have a baby and a seventy five year mother jeopardized. You were treated but no one is coming to help us.’ Nadine replied: ‘Because I did not sit next to your husband. He was in tea room when I walked in, on another table not close to me. He text me and told me he had sat next to me, I was too ill to discuss but not sick enough not to know, that wasn’t true. I told him if he was worried, to call 111.’
Following that spat the little devil struck Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau wife, Sophie, recently returned from London and experienced flu-like symptoms. When tested, she proved positive that same Thursday evening. She was immediately isolated. And so was the Prime Minister Trudeau for two weeks. In a statement issued by his office it was said, "The Prime Minister is in good health with no symptoms. As a precautionary measure and following the advice of doctors, he will be in isolation for a planned period of 14 days." Sophie will be in quarantine for 14 days.
It was actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson’s turn next to fall victim while shooting a film in Queensland, Australia. Tom tweeted: "There are those for whom it could lead to a very serious illness. We are taking it oneday-at-a-time. There are things we can all do to get through this by following the advice of experts and taking care of ourselves and each other, no?" His wife Wilson also posted a light-hearted tweet writing, "From here on out, the only Corona I want is from Mexico and you drink it."
And the film they were shooting? Zone of the life of Elvis Presley. No wonder they were all shook up with chills and fevers.
Australian Home Minister Pete Dutton was next in line to take the COVID hit. The Federal Government frontbencher said he felt fine but woke up with a temperature and sore throat.
"I immediately contacted the Queensland Department of Health and was subsequently tested for COVID-19," Mr Dutton said in a statement. ‘’I was advised by Queensland Health this afternoon that the test had returned positive. It is the policy of Queensland Health that anyone who tests positive is to be admitted into hospital and I have complied with their advice.’
Mr Dutton had been in the US last week, where he met with Ivanka Trump, AttorneyGeneral William Barr and officials from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance on March 6, according to a Twitter post from Australia's embassy in the United States. He had participated in Cabinet's national security committee meeting on Thursday, during which the Government decided to extend its China, Italy, Iran and South Korean travel bans, via phone.
But a spokesman for the Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: ‘’In advice provided to the Prime Minister this evening, the deputy chief medical officer has reiterated that only people who had close contact with the Minister in the preceding 24 hours before he became symptomatic need to self-isolate. That does not include the Prime Minister or any other members of the Cabinet."
Mr Morrison will not be tested for COVID-19, based on medical advice.
Who will bite the dust next@ Ask not for whom the bells toll, for it may well toll for thee.
But if there is one silver lining in the corona it is that it has shed doubt on Kipling’s poetic assertion the ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet’. The COVID, whilst levelling all in the dust as equals, has perhaps brought the east and west closer to realising that all men are created equal and perish equal, and when engaged in a ‘mother of all wars’ war when there is no human enemy but one common foe threatening mankind, the end result remains the same: the senseless loss of human lives whether claimed by man or virus makes no difference.
When nature’s virus has brought the world to its knees, when the House of God in the Vatican is sealed and locked down, what hope is there for mankind but for East and West to meet and stay locked in embrace and consider the lot of one as the equal lot of the other.
PS: Boris Johnson warned the British public to brace themselves to finding even 10,000 suspected COVID cases and to accept that the loved ones of many will die before their time. Hopefully scientist working in some lab will find a vaccine soon. Even if none is found round the corner and millions die as a result, there still be hope in people’s hearts that a cure will be found, even in five years’ time. Hallelujah.
But what about climate change, what about global warming? Scientists have been warning for years now that if mankind does not mend its ways and recklessly carries on polluting the earth and the earth’s temperature rises two degrees more, the climate change caused as a result will be unfit for human habitation and will be irreversible. In what scientist’s lab can we then harbour hope to find a vaccine or cure then?