The Impossible Virus
Photo: AFP
- Cambodianess
- June 28, 2020 9:48 AM
« We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis: It’s an economic, social and, in some countries, a political crisis: Its repercussions will span decades,” said earlier this month Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, during a virtual conference organized by the Emirate of Dubai.
Here is a warning that sends shivers down your spine.
We have seen whole economic sectors collapse throughout the world at a staggering speed with civil aviation and tourism heading the list.
We have seen getting disrupted, almost instantaneously, the world’s businesses and industries’ supply chains, putting out of work hundreds of thousands of workers.
We have seen cities and the countryside getting emptied all of a sudden.
We have seen chaos on a scale that would have seemed impossible only six months ago.
We all deep down harbor the hope that everything will get back to normal—just like before—as quickly as this chaos irrupted.
We hope the comeback will be quick, spectacular.
We want this for all those we know will not be able to hold up for long in this economic slump.
We want this so that everyone can regain full freedom of movement, having realized how much this is a freedom we cannot live without.
It’s possible that things will happen this way.
But it also is possible that nothing will happen as we hope.
It would be foolish to ignore this as we all just learned through bitter experience.
