By Ekpa Stanley Ekpa Esq
SIR: As the coronavirus crisis continues to ravage the world, shutting down major sectors and leaving scientific, economic, political and social consequences, our creative perception is questioned – is everything ever going to be okay again?
Given that we are in a world that has resiliently overcome multiple pandemics and crisis over many centuries since the 541 AD pestilence broke out in the city of Pelusium, we will overcome this moment too.
Before the expected end to this pandemic, we are left with few leading options of doing our best to stay safe, utilize the moment and emerge refueled. We must use this moment of lockdown to prepare ourselves to unlock the future together.
Our generation is at a lucky trajectory of history when nature conspires to lock down humanity. This is a great opportunity for us to unplug and reboot our processes; a time to refresh, renew and restore; and a time to refill, refuel and reinvent ourselves for the emerging global order.
Sir Isaac Newton‘a generation emerged out of their own lockdown with sustainable solutions and innovation for mankind’s most complex needs. We have the advantage of technology and digital diversity that can help us to channel our energy to learn, catch fun and create new values.
In 1665-65 when the Bubonic plague broke out, young Isaac Newton was one of the students sent home due to the lockdown. He was at Cambridge when the plague broke out. Like the current case, academic institutions were closed.
Stuck on his family estate in rural Lincolnshire, he was deeply engrossed to nature’s designs and keenly observed how an apple falling from a tree responded to the same force as the moon orbiting the earth, this led him to a theory of gravity; and also noticed light in its many colors and began to think about optics.
Today, while we continue to celebrate the inventions of that generation, this is our time to galvanize our generation for bold, creative, innovative and sustainable solutions for the collective survival of mankind.
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Though it seems we have lost the original age of humanity, this crisis gives us another chance to stand together to build a more harmonious humanity; though we are tried and bruised, but from Beijing to Berlin, from California to Chile, from Netherlands to Nigeria, we shall recover and rebuild the world. No virus can tire nor cut the fabrics of human resilience, and now is the best moment in human history to put our collective resistance to creative use.
But we can only overcome this deadly pandemic if we continue to act fast and openly in contact tracing, testing and quarantining. We must ensure a coordinated and transparent application of public-private and philanthropic support and resources to tackling the pandemic.
We must shun our greed by ensuring that no dime is misappropriated. It would amount to the highest degree of crime against humanity if anyone is found to wrongly channel resources designated to fight the pandemic for personal use.
We must also ensure equality, respect for human dignity, social inclusion in attending to all patients and shun any form of discrimination and stigmatization.
We owe our country and the entire community of humanity a duty to keep safe and take individual responsibility in curtailing the spread of the pandemic; we owe ourselves a duty to observe all recommended preventive and precautionary measures of social distancing; we owe the society a duty of care by staying indoors and help halt the spread of the pandemic.
And those within rural communities, people must be cautioned to apply safety measures even in their wrongly assumed immunity from contaminating the pandemic. No class, race, or commons is immune from infection.
Beyond this, we owe ourselves a duty of care at this moment. You do not have to be a billionaire before you reach out to people you can support and supplement their means of survival while staying indoors.
We must live and practice love through this hard moment. If we cannot control nature’s designs, we must love to control the effects on human borders. Let’s all be proud part of the solutions this moment’s crisis demand. Spread only verified information that can help others stay healthy and safe.
- Ekpa Stanley Ekpa Esq., <ekpastanleyekpa@gmail.com>
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