BENGALURU: Yes, borders – those lines which demarcate ‘ours’ from ‘there’s’. ‘Ours’, because within those borders, ideally, is our safety, where we belong, where we nurture our freedom, our dreams, our education, and our health.In many ways, then, these are the men and women who are ensuring our very safety which enables us to go about our freedom, to achieve what we desire.
Now put that in the context of the ongoing pandemic. You will realise that despite these brave men and women putting their lives on the line for our safety, suddenly a billion-plus fronts have opened, threatening each one of us directly.
The enemy does not comprise divisions of six-footers armed with sophisticated weapons shooting everyone and everything in their way; nor do our own soldiers have any arsenal in their possession to stop this enemy that is presently devouring us. It threatens them too, just as directly as it does us. The country’s most valuable asset – called ‘human resources’ – is directly under threat from these invaders.
The enemy we are talking about is a microscopic one, measuring anywhere between 50 to 200 nanometres. If you want to know how small that is, here goes: break a metre into a billion equal parts. Each part is a nanometre. Simply put, a nanometre is a billionth of a metre. And this virus is attacking us in trillions and trillions, entering our bodies through our mouths, nostrils and eyes, and playing havoc with our respiratory system – literally taking our breath and life away.
The threat is real. This Covid-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has already claimed 1,78,793 lives across India, including 13,351 in Karnataka. All through 2020 and till now, it has affected 1.5 crore people in India, including 11,24,509 in this state.Now, look at the irony. Our borders protected, there is nobody to protect our own bodies from these invaders within the safety of our own borders ... nobody, except ourselves! Suddenly, we are transformed into soldiers – each with a responsibility to protect ourselves and those around us.
One may argue that the coming of the vaccines has brought much relief. But if you look around, not only have there been cases of reinfection, but even some who have completed the second dose of the vaccination have emerged positive with this viral infection.
However, we are not defenceless against this virus. From the very beginning of this pandemic early last year, experts have been shouting sore that we already have vaccines – three of them. That was before we even heard of Covishield, or Covaxin, or Sputnik-V. The vaccines they were talking about: Wearing a mask, maintaining safe distance from the others, and personal hygiene.
Today, ourselves as soldiers fighting these invaders, although we do not have offensive weapons to destroy these minuscule scoundrels, we still have these three ‘vaccines’ – our defensive weapons. You may laugh it off, but they effectively play the roles that Covishield or Covaxin do – keep the virus away, although the latter helps fight the virus inside our body, while the former prevents the virus from entering the body itself.
Unfortunately, despite each one of us being armed with these three “defensive vaccines”, we have allowed the second wave of the pandemic – much more lethal than the first – to overwhelm us. It looks like we have decided to go down without a fight. Have we?