Daily Times

Rather than adopting a reactionary approach about the matter of another lockdown, the government’s energies are better spent making everybody understand that we will just have to come to terms with a different way of living for quite a while. Sure, another lockdown is very much on the cards, but that is only because people didn’t behave in the way they should have over the past couple of weeks. And even now there’s only so long everything can be shut down all over again. The same pressures will emerge; only much sooner this time. So there’s no option really but adapting to this new reality; that people will have to maintain minimum distance, wear masks, and go out only when absolutely necessary.

This is how people will have to live till a vaccine is developed somewhere to cure the coronavirus. But now that initial hopes of a quick antidote have completely faded, and the global economy has been pushed into a deep recession in a matter of months, there is growing concern about maintaining output and jobs till the crisis lasts. Because if this hole is not plugged people will just keep losing work, the lowest in the food chain will die of hunger and starvation rather quickly, and a large army of unemployed, underfed workers could appear in all corners of the world. The world has not seen this type of a crisis in living memory, and must be prepared for the worst case scenario. But all that only brings us back to the bit about individual discipline. Things will move along only when everybody plays a part. If ordinary people continue to violate safety rules they will put a lot of people’s lives as well as the entire reopening effort in danger.

And countries like Pakistan will really have to improve their game. It is incredible that such confusion has persisted about the basic response to the virus. And the less said about individual sense of responsibility, at least as it was displayed as people rushed to shopping stores, the better. These are times when people will have to put everything on hold, even the most sacred rituals, in the interest of individual as well as global survival; since truly never have the two been quite as aligned as they are at this moment. This crisis will pass with time. But what is left after it will be decided in the months, and perhaps couple of years, ahead. Leaders must now show the wisdom to appreciate this fact and the ability to make people accept it. *