The COVID-19 Coronavirus:  The Biggest Blessing in Disguise For Mankind and Humanity

The world is changing rapidly. For over a year now, COVID-19 has been causing havoc in both human health and the economy. The coronavirus pandemic has left no corner of the world untouched.

Since the first case of the disease was reported in China in December 2019, while 62 million have already recovered, more than 86 million infections have been recorded throughout the world with about 2 million deaths in 218 countries and territories.

For many, COVID-19 has been a wakeup call that the world is changing. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed a number of crises that have been in plain view but ignored by humanity, including challenges like inadequate medical facilities, unequal distribution of income and wealth, fragile supply chains and gender inequality. COVID-19 has truly reminded us all that no man is an island.

The coronavirus is just not taking lives but has further widened the gap that exists between people and nations. While the poorest countries, the poorest neighbourhood, the oldest and weaker people are showing more vulnerability, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, thereby making it difficult for them to feed themselves and their families. COVID-19 has helped refocus our minds on what is really important to human survival: clothing, shelter, health, food and the need to ensure equality.

Just as the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic led to the creation of a favorable environment for the comprehensive equal rights amendment to help women take up roles previously exclusive to men, a century later this pandemic is giving us the opportunity to recalibrate mankind lopsidedness.

The start of the year 2020 turned out to be uneventful. 2020 was supposed to bring progress and prosperity for all mankind. Early February 2020, the COVID-19 coronavirus had just started to grip China and the rest of the world thought it to be more or less a china problem. A handful of senior global leaders were still talking about trade wars and trade imbalances, ideological differences on the basis of religion/military and finance leading to deadly conflicts and business houses/businessmen gloating on the stock prices of their companies being at lifetime high.

At the end of the year, in less than 2 weeks this virus, then popularly called “the China-Virus”, spreading like a wild fire across the globe, bringing down all these alleged edifices of financial, intellectual, scientific, military and historical supremacy over each other in less than 10 days, created a havoc around the world. The global supply chains that we were so proud of suddenly came to a stop. Suddenly, so much for the conflicts, divisions and havoc that we created in the name of progress that humanity stands naked at the precipice of a bottomless abyss.

Never ever since the advent of humanity and its recorded history has the world been so genuinely secular and united just to be able to survive and save itself from this cataclysm and everyone only worrying about the most primordial need of food, shelter, clothing and procreation and everyone is wishing well for everyone else just to ensure self-preservation.

The coronavirus pandemic is here and here to stay for at least 2 more years. For the next 2 years, all we have to and need to remember is that on this earth, in these times of global economy and pandemic, the shrieks of any of our fellow cohabitants, either animal, poor, rich, fortunate or unfortunate, are all the same in the face of adversity. The coronavirus pandemic will come to an end but let us not forget that lesson that mother earth had to impose upon us.

Everything considered, the COVID-19 pandemic is a blessing in disguise, an opportunity for mankind to find its soul lost in the morass of greed, corruption, one-upmanship and destruction of our beautiful planet in the garb of progress.

We are now facing circumstances we have never thought we would. But still, life goes on; you can watch it go by or, you can jump in and be a part of the journey. Whether we like it or not, we need to deal with what is in front of us.

The choice is entirely ours.

J. Michael Dennis

Syndicated Columnist … and other things