Stop whining about your loss of comfort. Smell the coffee, it kills

Dubai - Your comparative discomfort as compared to what Herculean efforts the authorities are making to keep you safe is of such little consequence. You are not privileged.

We have been loping along with the impact of the virus, adjusting life dramatically, drastically, responding to the call of medical science, the dictate of government, our own common sense, even confining ourselves to the house, taking all the precautions and asking each other over the phone when it will end. Whatever it is, the whole mess is surreal and bizarre, but still a distant concept, like something happening on the horizon, the shock of the numbers in rapid fire intensity still only numbers, celebs catching it still a newsflash, remote in a fashion.

Then one day you are at home, unable to go out when a friend has it. The Covid-19 has struck and now he is dead. Like dead. Of Covid-19. Suddenly, the dynamics change. You have a name to give the plague that has befallen the world. He has gone. This is not some distant figure, this is someone you broke bread with, laughed and joked and spend evenings together. It cannot be happening but it has.happened. The sheer mind-blowing maniacal madness of absorbing the news. It is like hysteria having a hysterical fit, like okay, joke's over, wake up time.

And against this backdrop there are people asking if the 'stay home' order will be relaxed. Can we go kayaking? Is it okay to take a boat out to sea? Will I get a permit to walk my dog? It is my sister's birthday. Can I go to the Palms to pop in and wish her? What's wrong in our taking our evening walk?

Which part of it do such people not understand that they have to seek exceptions. Kayaking indeed! The KT had a letter the other day with someone saying they had seen some folks on the water and was this acceptable?

Your comparative discomfort as compared to what Herculean efforts the authorities are making to keep you safe is of such little consequence. You are not privileged. Covid-19 doesn't give a toss about who you are. You want to go kayaking.and fishing.and sail the waters. So do I. I want to do all that and more, go swimming, see a movie, meet my daughters, have a party. But I am not going to.

And then what is worse is that when they haul you up for being an ass, you protest and grumble and scoff their efforts. For sheer ingratitude that is hard to beat.