Human beings on this planet, are facing acute environmental pollution since the middle of last century, particularly due to use of huge quantities of fossil fuels mainly in transport and industrial sectors, burning of various types of organic wastes of agricultural and domestic activities, and releasing most of the untreated urban sewerage as well as solid wastes to water bodies and land mass.
As a result, a large number of world population has been suffering from various types of deadly diseases including tuberculosis, asthma, cancer, dysentery etc. Consequently, there are innumerable untimely deaths.
While efforts are being made to make the environmental pollution-free, a massive disaster appeared suddenly in the beginning of 2020 and started attacking human society furiously. This is the monstrous coronavirus, which originated in a place called Wuhan in China and is now acting as a biological weapon.
The COVID-19 pandemic is still going strong and has already affected about 16 crore people and taken the lives of about 40 lakh of them across the world. In India alone, 3 crore people have been affected with fatality being about 4 lakh. Even now the severity of the virus is quite high in India as well as some other countries, and is killing thousands of people every day.
Because of COVID-19, socio-economic life has been severely affected. Educational institutions, industries, developmental projects, transport systems, commercial activities, government administration etc. have been highly derailed.
On the other hand, it is surprising that in China, the effect of COVID-19 has been reported to be very minimum. The total number of coronavirus cases in the world’s most populated country has been reported to be 91,006, with just 4636 deaths. While socio-economic life of people all over the world is limping, the situation seems to be quite normal in China.
Most of the people in the world believe that this virus has not originated automatically in the marketplace of Wuhan, but it’s been created in a laboratory and is now behaving as a deadly biological weapon.
The second wave of coronavirus has affected India much more than any other country. It has necessitated much more precautions in all sectors in addition to staying at home as much as possible, using mask while going outside, maintaining social distance, frequently washing hands with soap and sanitizing the contaminated areas etc.
Most of our doctors, nurses and other healthworkers are busy day and night in treating affected people even by risking their own lives. Schools, colleges, administrative, industrial and commercial activities, business meetings, conferences etc. are being carried out on a much limited scale mostly through online in order to avoid spreading the virus.
In India, like in other countries, the Central and state governments are engaged in minimizing and preventing the menace of COVID-19 through prevention of social, political and religious gatherings. The main objective is to protect people from coronavirus through vaccination as quickly as possible.
In this task, our scientists, doctors and other healthworkers have played a great role. In a very short period of time, our scientists have developed some effective vaccines and these are being produced in large scale on war footing. Most of the hospitals in the country are filled with coronavirus-affected patients. The whole situation is still horrifying in India and most other countries.
During this disaster, we should be more concerned about safety of our younger generation. The youths are the most important section of human society as its future depends on them. They are quite energetic and trained to implement the planned socio-economic programmes and projects in different sectors for better living by utilizing more effectively natural resources of this planet.
Youths, including those below 24 years, constitute about 40% of the world’s population and, in India, they are about 50% of the country’s population of the country. Therefore, all efforts should be made to protect them from COVID-19. Scientists all over the world are making special efforts to develop vaccines to protect them from such a dreadful virus. It is hoped that very soon it would be possible to vaccinate them. Till then, it is important to keep them at home and get them educated through online programmes.
Under such circumstances, teachers have a great responsibility to conduct online education and assessment effectively. It is unfortunate that online education cannot be carried out in most of the rural areas of developing countries, where such facilities for teaching small children are not there. However, in such cases temporarily parents should take care of the education of their kids as much as possible. It is hoped that after vaccination by the end of the year, all of them can go back to school.
The deadly pandemic is of great concern for the entire humanity. It is highly essential for the World Health Organization (WHO) to find out the truth about the origin of coronavirus and take necessary action. Unless the world body finds out the truth, and acts to stop such activities, human beings are likely to be affected by many such viruses in the years to come.
WHO is supposed to keep track of various health-related activities undertaken by different countries. When the coronavirus appeared in Wuhan, the Chinese government should have been asked to isolate the country from the rest of the world till the virus died out. Had this been been done, it is very likely the world would have been spared of the present situation.
Our motto for all time to come should be ‘Let all nations live together in a peaceful, prosperous and co-operative manner and enjoy the resources of the world in an environment friendly atmosphere and make better provisions for our future generations’.
