THE NEW WORLD ORDER
COVID-19
By Amber Omer
The pandemic spread from Wuhan has engulfed the world entirely now. It feels living in a horrible dream like someone yelling out to “wake me up please.” The appalling condition the world is battling with seems like a never-ending phenomenon of fear and fright, which has left everyone in a panic. Here, the world’s history has added a new chapter in the name of novel coronavirus or COVID-19. Now, it has taken a new turn where the media is flooded with everyday death toll and infection cases. People are abandoned in their own houses, and the world is now nearing the recession period. Are we all prepared? Let’s just dig into the statistics data and how the world is coping up.
Inception-Criticism:
The ambiguity about the virus spread, the reasons and the future treatment options ensuing day by day. In the earlier days of its inception, Chinese people were so skeptical about wearing masks and disinfectants used as a device to shield from the flu-like symptoms. Since there was no news of deaths, they were oblivious about the contiguity of the virus, they lit out the sky to welcome the lunar New Year. But then, the international media faced the worst scenario of the world’s disruption occurred by a virus. The news were all bombarded with deaths and positive cases. First, they took a wrong turn bashing out loud on the Chinese tradition of eating wild animals. But later, Wuhan was dying and the world was watching. In the midst of the Wuhan battle, it already hit the nearby countries of China until it hit the whole world and engulfed it into a bio war against the virus. China is held accountable for this novel virus outbreak which carried away thousands of innocent souls and left the world in the economic collapse.
Global Cases:
Globally, the total death rates and the positive cases for corona have crossed limits. Starting from the central city of Wuhan, China’s epicenter for the novel corona outbreak reported the below-mentioned cases in its two and a half months battle with a virus.
Cases in Wuhan
Confirmed
84,489 ()
Deaths
3,342 ()
Recovered
78,987 ()
For now, Wuhan is stirring back to its life which affected severe crackdown on travel and trade activities. It is reporting no new cases of pneumonia, although severely slammed by international media, China has ended its all-encompassing lockdown from Wuhan on April 8th.
The storm of corona ghastly turned its focus to various European countries including Italy, which crossed the death rate of China’s epicenter. Italy fought its worst battle with this disease where the death toll continued to soar. According to the World Health Organization, the fatality rate in Italy is 10% more than the average global rate which is 3.4%.
Cases in Italy
Confirmed
168, 941
Deaths
22, 170
Recovered
40, 164
Why the death toll in Italy is much higher than any other region in the world? This question has a powerful reason which is the higher rate of old age people in Italy across Europe. According to the New York Times, about 23% of the people in Italy are 65 or older. About 47% of the cases of death were in the age brackets of 80 to 90, which are more susceptible to pneumonia and virus severity.
From Europe to Asia, from America to the Middle East, COVID-19 has been ascribed as the biological weapon designed to exterminate the human population. The pandemic is severely affecting the lives of people all over the world. We are currently in a state of inexplicable confusion about the future consequences of this fatal pneumonia virus.
Global Cases
Confirmed
2,011,725 ()
Deaths
131,150 ()
Recovered
501,758 ()
How the superpower USA is battling with Corona? With its more than two-month journey of the corona, the superpower United States of America has completely lost it. The next epicenter New York has more than 20 thousand registered confirmed cases with 15 thousand deaths so far other than the thousands of unregistered quarantined cases, which have not been admitted to the hospitals so far. Up till now, the USA has crossed 671,000 confirmed cases throughout. The fatality and the contagiousness has left everyone in chaos and fear. People are reported to have bought weapons out of fear to fight with COVID-19. The grocery stores are out of stock from the essentials items. The cities are turning into ghost towns. Hospitals have declined to admit patients due to a huge lack of equipment like ventilators. The essential businesses are still opened, but private businesses are laying off people. On the other hand, the government of the USA has taken some serious measures for health and safety. International and domestic travel has been banned. Although, this has impacted greatly to the supply chain including medical supplies and drugs.
Good news:
In this time of disguise, the role of different communities and health workers should not be ignored. We believe that this pandemic is not just confined to the health issue now, but it has become a political problem. Besides, the health and medical research teams all over the world are busy inventing the cure for coronavirus. Even the developing countries like Pakistan have successfully worked on finding a therapeutic measure against COVID-19 through IVIG (blood plasma). Moreover, Takeda (Japanese pharmaceutical company) also developed a plasma-derived therapy for coronavirus. Across the world, the field of medicine is in the race of creating the vaccine. Although, it will take little time but we hope the cure is not too far.
China won the race:
The patronage and the endorsement with China in winning the battle of coronavirus is a positive sign from those who have accepted it as a strong country rather than blaming it out of racism. This virus has revealed the true picture of the economic condition of the superpower. China is proved to be the impregnable superpower, hence it was not impossible for it to win this. Also being a self-sufficient state, China had a strong backup plan which did not affect it much despite the severe lockdown and the international travel restrictions. If we adopt the same mechanism to fight with corona by containment and prowess method, we definitely would see a win in the foreseeable future.
Amber Omer is Masters in International Relations. She has worked as a lecturer of Pakistan Studies and Social Studies at Commecs college in Pakistan and was also the owner of a local women’s clothing brand named “Laali”. She has recently joined her husband in China, just couple of months before Corona virus outbreak. In her words “At this stage of life, I’m compelled to write; I am an Entrepreneur, a Mentor and a housewife. Writing is generally based on observation, I believe simple words hit hard.
