The REAL reason behind the Global RESPONSE to COVID-19!

There is something unusual, almost sinister about the global response to COVID-19. To me, it is a kind of self-preservation. The caring and collaboration exhibited by the rich and most powerful of our days isn’t anything like love and care, but self preservation. Let’s dig in!

Every year, tens of thousands of children die of hunger and millions of people are dying of malnutrition across the globe. Diarrheal diseases alone due to lack of water and sanitation facilities kill more children in Uganda and Africa than malaria, Measles and HIV combined!

READ THIS TOO: 10 health crises in Uganda other than COVID-19

Violence and insecurity in various parts of Uganda and the world rob families of innocent beautiful lives in millions per year.

Wars in middle east and Africa have claimed millions of people and sent hundreds of millions of children, men, and women in unending suffering, hunger, rape and defilement, bad weather and climate and all sorts of human suffering.

In all sense, coronavirus (COVID-19) isn’t the world’s number one killer, not even the second!  

READ THIS TOO: Is Coronavirus the worst pandemic we have seen? Not even close!  

And yet, we have never been asked to change our behaviors and globally respond to such pandemics! No leader has ever ordered us to stop going out even for one day or stop aviation industry even for one week or put clubs and betting on hold just for a day if it meant saving any single life!  

No one has ever asked factories to forcibly adopt sustainable means of production as to save thousands of people succumbing to cancers across the globe (By the way, cancers are among the top 3 leading causes of death across the world).  

No one has ever asked Coca-Cola to stop its lies and its poison of sodas sold across the globe. No one has ever put up a global scale lock-down as a demonstration against drug industry or tobacco-smoking or war and inhumane acts against women and children in Syria, Nigeria and Yemen. No one!

However, one virus, one simple less virulent virus has put us all on hold! Why?  

The reason behind the global response to COVID-19  

It is NOT because it is deadly. It is because coronavirus has visited everyone, including the rich and powerful.

This time, the small enemy hasn’t come for the vulnerable Palestine or the poor children in Katwe or Kalerwe slums or the crying old mothers in our villages. The virus came for all of us all, including the political leaders, the economic masters, the world’s greatest.  

READ THIS TOO: Life after COVID-19!  

The virus isn’t under anybody’s control and that is why we have all responded. But wars have someone controlling and choosing who should be hurt. Malnutrition has those it was meant to attack. Insecurity and violence have their own target. Hunger, poverty, cholera and all those filthy terrible punishments have homes they were designed for. They have someone controlling them. And thus don’t bother the world.

It seems the world responds more to that it can’t control than it does to usual events, even when the former are less dangerous! Isn’t it Bobi Wine who says, people fear what they don’t know? Surprise: Our response to coronavirus isn’t just about fear (at least not fear alone); it is socially, economically and politically constructed!  

READ THIS TOO: The fear of COVID-19 and why you shouldn’t fear!

Coronavirus has bothered the world simply because it is attacking the rich, the presidents, the queens, the ministers, those who for a long time have controlled all sorts of hazards and directed them to those they wished to kill or those they saw unworthy of salvation.   

Today, we are all unworthy, says the virus. And politicians and world leaders have noticed it.

They might scream that ‘we are in this together’ but we aren’t. They are saving their asses. Once everything settles and they are sure of their control again, we will go back to normal; to our usual suffering!

Coronavirus is a level up! But do fools ever learn? They never! Even today, during this pandemic, the ‘fools’ have used their power and resources to hurt the weak even more.

Even in this fight against coronavirus, the rich aren’t experiencing it the same way as the poor; consider quarantine, treatment, managing lockdown and more. As the world gains some momentum, the rich and most powerful show their true colors again!  

So, while pandemic tried levelling us, the poorer have suffered it more than the rich. But it’s a beginning! There is a day when all of us shall be equal, all in front of the great Judge, God!

READ THIS TOO: Museveni and fellows don’t have moral authority to command responsibility in COVID-19 crisis