Covid-19: A Wake Up Call To The World.

  

It is no doubt that COVID-19 has affected every aspect of our world. The pandemic has led to a severe and dramatic loss of human life worldwide, an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and as well as major social and economic disruption.

 However, one may argue that the pandemic has caused the environment to become neglected. Although the pandemic has provoked some negative environmental impacts on our world, it has also brought great environmental change and a nationwide lockdown has acted as a ‘wake up’ call for many of us. 

Our reaction during the first month of the COVID-19 is proof we have yet to discover that none of us are safe until all of us are safe.

 COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has crossed international boundaries. We cannot flatten the curve of the pandemic until we join forces and bravely stand together putting all our differences aside.

In the past and even now the world is extremely comfortable in tackling challenges exclusively. In the midst of all the modernization and development, as long as history enables us to understand, we have lost sight of what ties humanity together. 

As the youth of the present generation we face the consequence of these isolated efforts; evermore highlighting differences to mobilize for global actions. It is essential to take a step back to evaluate situations from a broad perspective to come up with partnerships that will stand the trial of modern day challenges.

Again the lack of understanding of the magnitude of COVID-19 and its utter indifference to the borders we define and the differences we emphasize is a wake up call for global action. COVID-19 is a crisis where we finally have been exposed for our lack of global partnerships. The silver lining in all the life lost is for us as the human race to stand ever more truthful and devoted for global action.

As the world evolves and time passes, there will be other challenges facing humanity. The nature of these challenges will most likely have the same nature in the utter neglect to modern day borders and separation. Moving forward we will not get away with being divided. We keep waiting for the magical solution but the most eloquent answer to the most pressing issues of our time is global action and partnerships.

The calamitous COVID-19 outbreak in India is a wake-up call for Africa that its governments and citizens must not let their guard down, the disease-control agency of the African Union (AU) has warned.

African nations generally do not have sufficient numbers of healthcare workers, hospital beds or oxygen supplies – and the continent of 1.3 billion would be even more overwhelmed than India if cases surged in a similar way.

 Africa depends on India heavily for vaccine supply as the AstraZeneca vaccines that are distributed by global COVAX, is manufactured by the Serum Institute in India. This will adversely affect the rollout of vaccination programs in Africa. Africa has already suffered a setback as India decided to cut back on supply. Thus the event is a wake-up call to us Africans to stick to W.H.O guidelines more importantly considering the fragile nature of our health systems.

 Also it is a wake-up call globally so other nations could convene to help these continents.

It’s been heartening to see the way we have all quickly united in the face of this enormous challenge.

 We’re more dependent on each other than ever before and our values – kindness, fairness, solidarity, respect, tolerance, accountability – are all integral to building our resilience and defeating this deadly virus.

I would also argue that these values are not only important to the way we treat each other; they are also crucial in how we treat our planet. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, many researchers have highlighted how the destruction of our biodiversity and natural capital has in fact perpetuated many new pathogens. 

Deforestation and urbanization, for example – coupled with a population explosion – has led to humans and animals coming into ever closer contact, resulting in the transmission of more diseases and viruses from wildlife to humans.

 Covid-19 is clearly a wake-up call that we must start living within our planetary boundaries. And I’m convinced we can do so, provided we equally value natural and human capital.

We will come out of this, but it’s simply a matter of determining how many lives we will lose to get to the other side of this pandemic. Being divided won’t help us survive the most challenging heath crisis of our time. We need to stand together, collaborate, nurture partnerships, and build an inclusive world for a brighter future.

Ogunsakin Rufus Oluwaseun

OS/20B/1339

Geology