Man proposes, God disposes- A Covid Saga.

This blog is quite an agonizing task for me to write. But I wish, in the near future, it is just a memory without any baggage.

COVID-19, a word that has wreaked havoc in our lives beyond anyone could imagine in a period of few months, and still dominates our thoughts everyday and keeps us living in unprecedented fear and agony. Most of us became aware and worried about the corona virus situation towards late February/ March of this year. However, it was not the case with me.

Me, being a medical professional and more over, keenly interested in alternative media sources and as someone who does not depend upon the idoit box for knowledge, was very much following the Chinese Covid situation right from early January 2020.

There were a number of factors- a lot of red flags, that was crying out right at my face that all the information that was being shared by China and given out in the mainstream media, was nothing but half-boiled truth- or not even amounting to so much.

There was an intense sense of intuition that this is not like the SARS, MERS or EBOLA situation that the world has faced in times we remember. There was something not right about this, right from the beginning. I started spending hours researching into all the data that was being made available- thanks to some good souls out of China, despite the heavy media and internet restrictions and few intelligent beings like Chris Martensen of peakprosperity.com. My usual day would start with myself sitting at my laptop right after brushing to see what is happening with the COVID situation; then it was still Corona virus and not as Covid-19 as we call it today.

The more I looked into it, I was sure this thing is going to blow up and it is to visit our neighbourhood in the near future. My thoughts went in a simple flow model. China- Middle East- India/Kerala. There was nothing going to stop this from reaching here. To be honest, though I went through a lot of data that claimed on this being a man-made disaster, a biological weapon, an elite conspiracy for population control, a century reset and a number of other theories, I was more bothered about the tough times that lay ahead of us.

I cannot deny the fact that I was intrigued by the 201 pandemic tabletop exercise hosted by The Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY.When I had watched it, it had some 10,000 views or so, now it has over 3 million. Is it not intriguing that we had a pandemic exercise with such an elite team of professionals, a month prior to the actual thing breaking out?

As days progressed, I started sharing the same information with near and dear ones, except to be ridiculed behind my back. I called up my friends in the gulf to take necessary precautions and store enough food and supplies to avoid the panic situation that was to spread soon, as I expected them to be struck before us. Quite as expected, no one gave a rat’s ass to what I said, not even my wife who is a medical professional herself. She too thought my ideas were far-fetched and China was far away. LOL!

I gradually reduced attending large gatherings and going to movies as a precaution, build up a good supply of essentials that can last few months- of course most of this made me look stupid in front of my parents who were worried now, that I might need some medical help!

Panic struck in UAE towards the end of February, when the Department of Education decided to shut down nurseries temporarily owing to Corona virus. This is when I started getting phone calls one after. The sad part is that despite my best efforts most of my friends abroad had to go through the unevitable PANIC shopping for all that was required.

The panic in the gulf, set in motion at least among a few here, as it was evident things are going to take a turn for the worse- only no one could gauge how hard and long it would be.

The problem with us humans is that we are very reluctant to change. We are not ready to believe something that we have not experienced. We are a bunch of over-optimistic living beings, even in times where it should take the backseat. The same is the reason we were not able to believe that such a drastic change is possible. To the one who was listening to me then, it was quite incomprehensible, far-fetched and unimaginable that we would be deprived of all the basic rights and conveniences that we enjoyed in our life and took for granted. To be stripped off our right to travel freely in a land we call our own, where there is no war or invasion, to fear to breathe the air we never thought about it that it existed, to be living in a state of uneasiness and panic everyday- and not be able to see the light at the end of this tunnel for quite some time, to think that places of worship will be closed out for months together, to imagine your grandparents walking out wearing masks- Five months ago, all these seemed impossible! Resistance to change is our natural instinct. Rather:

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy- J. Paul Getty

         But all my awareness and precautions went in vain due to some drastic change of events, which I had no control over..

To be continued…