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Covid 19: It's more than a war; it's an invasion
Covid-19 is relentless and remorseless and has no time for taking prisoners.
- PUBLISHED: Mon 27 Apr 2020, 4:46 PM UPDATED: Mon 27 Apr 2020, 8:32 PM
Someone sent a forward message, saying the world is at war against Covid-19. It is like WW III and we are all soldiers in it. I differ a little on the war label. In war there is respite, you get a break, the enemy also follows rules of engagement, soldiers get furlough, time to kip and ease up. Frontline war has conventions.
This is attrition, an endless invasion in which Covid-19 has no conventions, no courtesies, the collateral damage to non-combatants, women, children and the elderly not muted by any mutually accepted codicils. On the contrary, Covid-19 is relentless and remorseless and has no time for taking prisoners.
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We are outflanked by a foe whose refusal to offer a breather has the global frontline infantry so to speak inching dangerously close to exhaustion. The medical establishment is on the back foot, support staff for supply lines and sanitation, teams for maintaining security and public safety are being pushed against the wall.
It is a hydra-headed monster and a terrorist combined. You win a small skirmish and a dozen new fronts open up before you know it. Now we are all in agreement that we will overcome, but the resistance is a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link and this chain has 7 billion plus links. One reckless, careless person can render nought this otherwise magnificent human endeavour to melt the lines of divide and create a cohesive and singular front.
Research scientists are looking for chinks in the enemy's armour. The herculean efforts to sanitise and isolate and quarantine and save lives is on 24/7, which is why we cannot afford to be cavalier or assume that in some way we are exempt from any responsibility and can flaunt the advisories with disdain.
When one and only one of us does that by either concealing symptoms or avoiding the facts or increasing the risks through their behaviour, he or she becomes that pebble in the pond. The ever increasing circles impact on so many people, people you don't know but for whom you have caused so much agony.
So stop and think. Even if it is more than a war, it is still your battle.
The famous Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu made three important observations: The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Then he said: The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. Finally: Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.
Is that us today?
