Coronavirus is not of this world. It’s a hugely strange disease – and almost everyone is now beginning to know about it.
Let’s point out one fact: at no point in the history of the world has there been a disease that has overwhelmed the whole world and has stopped it from moving.
Coronavirus caught the world by surprise. Nobody really paid much attention to it back it December when it was just freshly emerging. It was a virus the Chinese were going to find an answer to. They didn’t.
I am not an expert on coronavirus but this infection is fast, furious, and lethal. In a matter of three months, this disease has spread to all corners of world killing thousands of people.
In China where it started, at least 80,000 people got infected with at least 3,200 people succumbing to the virus. There is currently no well-founded cure for it.
There is one thing this virus hates the most. It’s called dithering.
In the case of The Gambia, some declared the only one way to stop it from getting into our territory was to close our borders. This was as soon as it got to Senegal. We didn’t and we paid a price. We now have three cases. One died.
There is now complete bedlam over the disease. Schools, mosques and churches have all been asked to close. Gambians love shaking each other’s hand. We don’t do that anymore. We now elbow-bump.
The World Health Organisation has come up with a number of preventive measures such as good personal hygiene and social distancing. These, according to experts, can help one from catching the virus.
But coronavirus is a disease, and just like any other disease there will come a solution. By this time, it would have lived out its time.
Lamin Njie is the editor-in-chief of The Fatu Network. He has previously edited The Standard and The Voice.
