Ignorance of people towards social distancing and other precautionary measures.

Fear, money and duty leading to disobedience during the pandemic

                                                                                                  -by Medepalli Sidharth

As of today there are 22 million confirmed cases of Covid19 and around 777 thousand deaths worldwide, if you open google and see the map you can see blue dots (indicating presence of coronavirus) all over the world. Coronavirus was earlier thought of as a virus only affecting animals but as we have witnessed the virus also affects another animal--humans--which considers itself otherwise. The various special abilities of Covid19 such as being able to live on non-living surfaces, rematerializing in recovered patients makes it even more dangerous and baneful than a regular virus, but even after all this why are the people ignoring social distancing and other precautionary methods?

One of the possible answers to this is reduced fear and lack of conscious awareness that we humans are mortals. At the very beginning of the pandemic many countries and the people acted swiftly and started taking precautionary measures, on a national level it meant lockdowns and work from home initiatives and on a personal level it meant social distancing, using masks and sanitizers, soaps to wash our hands. For quite a significant period of time coronavirus could bring fear into the hearts and minds of the people making them abide by the precautionary measures, but with the passage of time people have become fearless of the virus, which would have been a great thing unless it was accompanied by unawareness of human mortality, and that is precisely what has happened, even after hearing and for some seeing the devastating situations at hospitals people still believe that coronavirus cannot touch them and feel they are immortals and are foolishly ignoring precautionary measures, but this ignorance and unawareness as a cause of disobeying the necessary precautionary measures is only a part of the story.

There is another set of people who are neither ignorant, nor unaware of their mortality but are still forced to unfollow the safety measures and you can not really blame them for this because unless they risk their lives ,those who are dependent on them will lose their lives. I am talking about the labourers, daily wage workers and immigrant workers or labourers. These people can not work from home as their work is manual and they can not expect advance payments since their payment happens on each day on the basis of the labour hours they put in. Now these people will have to go for work or else they won't be able to provide financial support to their families living with them or far away. The option of going back to their homes, which are generally in some other city or even a different state, will also need the labourers to ignore the precautionary measures. In this case money and financial crisis leads to ignoring the safety norms. 

Finally there are people who are ignoring the precautionary measures in a way but they do it not out of their unawareness of being mortals or because of some financial crisis but because of their duty towards their people, country and the world as a whole. I am talking about the doctors, policemen and other emergency services. People in these fields are constantly risking their lives in order to save the lives of many more and we must applaud them and try to as much as possible obey the precautionary measures for the greater good of everybody . In conclusion the people ignoring social distancing and other precautionary measures are the ones who are either foolishly fearless people unaware of their mortality, the ones who are forced to do so because of their economic condition and finally those who are fulfilling their respective duties to ensure the safety of everybody. Lack of fear and conscious awareness of one's mortality, problems related to money and duty are the three major factors leading the people to disobey the safety measures. Let us all try to, as much as possible to obey social distancing and other precautionary measures and hope that we survive this pandemic.

Thank you.

Instagram ID @sidharthmedepalli