Shall we begin to live again?

I have stopped reading the obituary column in the newspaper. It became very traumatic. To lose nine close friends in succession to Covid-19, including one whom I had known as a frolicking schoolboy, was devastating. Some of the families whom I contacted to offer my sympathies sent me links to watch the funeral on YouTube. That made things worse.

Many others would have had similar experiences to understand the ravages of a pandemic. Millions wiped off the face of the earth. Millions more shattered by the loss of family and friends. The deceptively beautiful coronavirus came like some satanic tornado on the face of the earth, killing and destroying everything in its path. The first twelve months witnessed only destruction and death. Thanks to science and research, we are now seeing humanity scrambling up on its feet to pick up the pieces as a result of vaccinations and other measures.

But the havoc caused at the individual level? When the way of life changed from the real to the virtual? Children lost touch with friends and teachers and classmates. Professionals worked from home and lost touch with teammates. The older generation sat glued to telephones to share their loneliness with other lonely persons. Parents met their children scattered across the globe on Zoom and exchanged pleasantries with friends via the internet. Even here, only the tech savvy enjoyed these luxuries. Covid-19 succeeded in making humans into robots, punished them with loneliness and taught them to appreciate the goodness of human contact.

The worst victims have been children who have faced tremendous physical and psychological pressures these last 15 months. This entire experience was beyond their comprehension. It is a miracle that they have not succumbed to their fears. But the scars are bound to remain. The ordeal faced by socially and economically deprived children has been worse. They did not even have the luxury of online schooling. They are the kids of our city slums whose parents became unemployed when the pandemic struck. They, like their affluent peers, have faced uncertainty and isolation. The fear of contracting some rare disease and dying has driven many of them into depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, parents also seem to have lost the ability to address their children’s emotional needs as they themselves are struggling to keep their families afloat.

According to researchers, Covid-19 may have affected the mental health of adolescent children very badly. Young adults are known to have succumbed to depression as a result of little or no social contact. Their findings reveal that excessive social isolation among children or even adults can wreak havoc on their health and wellbeing. This is particularly true of societies which lived gregariously with unreserved social interaction, like in India. The last 15 months have seen families separated, friends distanced, and communication strictly confined to the phone. A doctor friend confided that this has not only affected his professional life but he is now having to deal with online patients -- mostly women -- exhibiting signs of deep depression.

An interesting article in the scientific journal Nature tells us that studies conducted on the pandemic consistently show that young people, rather than older people, are most vulnerable to increased psychological distress, perhaps because their need for social interactions is stronger. It also suggests that young women are more vulnerable than young men, and people with a previously diagnosed psychiatric disorder are at particularly high risk for mental-health problems like anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. These are also the same persons who are paranoid of falling sick, or becoming victims of the pandemic. Their excessive and unnecessary precautionary measures may be opening the door to other serious lifestyle ailments. If Covid-19 has arrived just as the plague or malaria or smallpox did, it is high time we accepted it and learned to live with it.

Malaria has given place to dengue and chikungunya. Have we not learned to live with both without going to pieces? Medical science is finding ways of warding off or treating Covid-19 with appropriate drugs. It is in our hands to prevent its incidence by following the main precautions, like getting vaccinated, avoiding excessive contact in crowded places and observing simple hygiene in our surroundings. If we follow the same rules as we do for any other seasonal infection like the flu or hepatitis and other gastrointestinal diseases, we should be able to restore a measure of normalcy into our lives. Perhaps, the secret of defeating Covid-19 is to scramble to our feet, pick up the pieces of our disturbed lives and start living again. As the well-known British author Somerset Maugham said: “People who live in fear, don’t live. They simply exist.”