What
a year it has been so far, eh. It’s sometimes difficult to reconcile what
started out as a promising new year to the current, almost desperate situation.
It seemed that life has thrown us all a curveball when we least expected it and
the thing is, just when we thought that the situation was beginning to improve,
the cases spiked again. And again. And again. What was a period of no death
spell is now a period of almost daily deaths. It’s not just Malaysia but a lot
of other countries are also experiencing their second, even third, wave and have
also reinstated lockdowns and travel restrictions.
I for one find this experience humbling. I find it
humbling that this invisible menace has the ‘power’ and ability to affect and
change so many lives throughout the world. We, the intelligent beings, have yet
to come up with a vaccine to fight it successfully. We have not managed to
arrest, curb and halt its spread - what we managed earlier was a temporary
respite (number of cases has been increasing since end of September) - and the
twice-extended conditional movement control order has so far not been
successful. We are presently, in short, at its mercy. When I think about it, I
wonder why people have to be arrogant and smug, condescending, dismissive and
patronising to others when we are all equally vulnerable to the threat and risk
of being COVID-19 positive or, worse, casualty. Don't they know that Nimrood die from
a mosquito? Do they not remember how the army of Abraha was
defeated by a flock of Ababeel birds? And this modern day virus has now claimed
hundreds of thousands of lives. So why do some people act like they're invincible
and untouchable?
If anything, this pandemic helps to remind me of the
five before five (youth before old age, health before sickness, wealth before
poverty, free time before preoccupation, and life before death).
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