I am sure you might have been very happy and excited at the start of this year and I was too, until the pandemic hit our lives bringing about huge losses, ambiguities, sufferings, a realization of our careless behaviour towards our mother earth till date and an attention towards how important it is to protect her
Apart from the these, there are a few other things to be learnt that are unavoidable, super important and makes me think that nothing can be permanent or fixed when it comes to life, death and nature, of course.
1. Maintain distance or welcome an unwanted guest:
You guessed it…Social distancing and not gathering is a thing now and if you cannot maintain it, be ready for the consequences too.
And we all know how difficult it is, especially for a Mumbaikar to follow something that they are not at all used to because they really feel at home when in crowd or when there is a chaos around them.
We are now forced to stand in a queue and maintain a distance of at least 3 feet at the bus stands or any other public places like a ration or a medical store, which was highly impossible for someone to teach us just a few months back; a sign of being ‘ATMA NIRBHAR’, isn’t it?
Now, I believed that this was the best precautionary measure that I could take, until I saw a video of a lady who caught the virus being at home, like completely quarantined, without social contact but in direct contact with things she had to touch and use for household and personal use, bringing me to another point where we are supposed to be dressed up, wearing hand gloves and masks and soaking everything possible in water for some 1-2 hours or there is a risk the virus could find a chance to enter the body and create ways to live in there like as we know, an unwanted guest.
2. Who said work from home is not possible:
We were often given excuses about possibilities of data confidentiality or data breach when we wanted to take no leaves but an alternative to work from our place (the fact that the policies also supported this) and guess what, they were never approved.
Well, now, every possible arrangements are made by a lot of companies, thanks to Corona, for us to work from home and this was what most of us had wished for
But everything comes with a cost and this time its our health again. I have heard a lot of colleagues and friends complain about the discomfort and poor body posture they have developed and how they miss the office chairs and tables which was made available to us free of cost keeping in mind our comfort levels, which of course, is not possible while we are working from home, as we spent a lot of time on bed which only makes our ‘ass-et’ suffer pain and discomfort and us sleepy, especially after lunch
3. How IT (Data Science) has helped our Government:
The Government has managed to take decisions regarding a lot of issues related to lock down or stricter lock down in containment zones, availability of extra beds for patients, food, additional screening or checks at the airports and inter-state bus depots, conducting Covid-19 tests for people travelling to their home towns, keeping them quarantined for few days along with taking care of their basic shelter and food requirements, developing apps like AAROGYA SETU to help identify corona symptoms in people and taking action to avoid getting hospitalised and forcing home-quarantine at an early stage, making it compulsory for people, doctors and nurses to wear masks and hand gloves and other required wearable.
How could they do it (at some or all levels – for those of you who have different opinions) in such short time?
Majority of it could be achieved though the way the data was captured, analysed and decisions were made.
Collecting public data through the Aarogya Setu app and then using it to take decisions to execute the next lock down or partial lock down or unlock or manufacturing medicines & vaccinations and testing the dosages, usability, side effects etc. in labs and medical colleges are a few examples of how data and information technology are helping authorities take decisions quickly.
4. Health comes first:
We do not realize the importance of something until we have a risk factor attached to it. And same is the case with our health too.
It is during this time of health crisis that we are paying attention to hygiene and immunity a lot either by consuming medicines or natural and organic fruits and vegetables and, do you see, for many of us, there is no cost factor associated with any of these at all, which used to be the point where we used to think a lot before spending a penny.
It is now that we have started realizing that nothing exists if we don’t exist. It is now that we should take 100% responsibility of this gift of human body bestowed up on us by nature and has to be paid utmost attention to.
It is now that we are careful about the smallest of the small things that could affect our health and hence we are taking precautions like washing hands for at least 2-3 minutes at regular intervals or drinking only hot water and ayurvedic health drinks or avoiding frequent face-touching, which earlier for us was just a thing to be heard and ignored.
Hope these lessons would not go in vain and we pass this on to our future generations where people value health first and understand and use the power of Science consciously !!!
Written by: Priyanka Mishra
Contact: mishrapriyanka11792@gmail.com