‘Everyday above ground is a great day, remember that’ this quote from rapper Pitbull may just be another run-of-the-mill song lyric, but you really feel the weight of these words when you look back at just how surreal and dystopian the last 5 years have been. Wars, economic decline, climate crises and millions of lives lost; everything just throws you into a pit of despair when you really start thinking about it. Perhaps the most surreal of these events was the Covid-19 pandemic.
Looking back, 2019 seems like yesterday and yet, it almost feels like eons ago when the world was a different place. Maybe it actually was. There’s a stark contrast between the pre-covid and post-covid worlds, and the pandemic really brought out the worst in humanity.
Also Read: Twitter will no longer enforce its Covid-19 misinformation policy
Dystopia personified
The SARS-C0V-2, which is the scientific term for the Covid-19 virus, was first identified in China’s Wuhan sometime in late 2019. The virus then quickly spread among people, before turning into a full-fledged outbreak in just a couple of weeks. The WHO officially declared the Covid-19 pandemic a public health emergency in January 2020, which then graduated to a pandemic in March 2020, and then the circus began.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
“We have therefore made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic”-@DrTedros #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/JqdsM2051A
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 11, 2020
Right from babies getting baptized with a water pistol in a socially-distanced environment to people injecting themselves with literal horse medicine (read ivermectin), those years almost seem unreal. They say life imitates art, but it’d be more apt to say that art imitates life, and the pandemic served as stellar evidence. Millions of people perishing, rampant racism, the medical infrastructure across the world hanging by a thread, a global recession worse than the 2008 economic crisis, and a never-ending sense of doom, the pandemic pushed humanity into a dystopia we only see in fiction.
The human cost
I remember tuning into the news channels everyday anxiously looking at the amount of new cases being reported everyday throughout the globe, and how people were dying in the tens of thousands every single day. There were medical experts urging people to stay indoors, governments severely restricting movement of the people, businesses being forced to shut and people just being left to fend for themselves for the most part.
The official death toll of the pandemic stands at over seven million, according to WHO data. That’s seven million lives lost, seven million people with stories and dreams, seven million people whose absence has left a gaping hole in countless lives. The world would never be the same.
Does anyone else not feel the same since 2020 and the pandemic?
byu/Individual-Ant-1631 inAdulting
The discourse online was filled with racist abuse directed at Asian people, blaming them for the global pandemic. Everyone was struggling, in all aspects. Being trapped inside four walls with no way out made everyone feel helpless, severely affecting the collective mental health. To this day, a lot of people feel a slight unease when they hear the term ‘Quarantine’, that’s how far reaching the impact of the coronavirus was.
The grim visuals from around the globe with doctors struggling to save patients in hospitals that were operating far beyond their means and mass burial grounds being built just to keep up with the number of people dying serves as a stark reminder of just how fragile the global health infrastructure was, and still is.
Economies tanking
The far-reaching economic impacts of the pandemic are felt to this day. Covid-19 pushed the world into recession, severely affected the supply chain and also led to inflation going through the roof. Governments around the world announced lockdowns, effectively shutting down all economic activities, sending billions across the globe into a frenzy.
The #COVID19 pandemic pushed economies into a #GreatLockdown, which helped contain the virus and save lives, but also triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression. Read @GitaGopinath’s latest blog on the #WEO https://t.co/fqM8iURHFv pic.twitter.com/5hmavw3SGj
— IMF (@IMFNews) June 27, 2020
Panic buying led to people stocking up on essentials like toilet paper, sanitizers, and food essentials. The depletion of stocks resulted in a price surge around the globe, so much so that governments had to step in and announce price caps on essentials like masks, tissues etc. No economic activities also led to business reporting a severe decline in profits, which subsequently led to mass layoffs and unemployment figures going through the roof.
The COVID-19 pandemic generated a loss of 2.6 billion international arrivals in 2020, 2021 & 2022 combined, almost twice the arrivals recorded in 2019.
🔗See the full report “International Tourism Highlights, The Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism (2020–2022)” https://t.co/qnWtWDN3B3 pic.twitter.com/zhF4Umsh0A
— UN Tourism (@UNWTO) September 7, 2023
The hospitality industry was among the worst-affected sectors throughout the world, along with the tourism sector. Governments across the globe announced relief packages for the citizens, but people still struggled to make ends meet. As with everything else, the global south dealt with the worst of the pandemic.
Things went south, literally
The global south bore the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. Countries like India remained some of the worst affected regions. Lockdowns announced with little to no warning, and almost no public transport available lead to migrant workers covering thousands of kilometers on foot, with many even losing their lives in the process. Countries like Lebanon and Iraq also dealt with severe conditions, owing to a weak health infrastructure and a fragile economy.
India has “substantially greater” COVID-19 deaths than official reports suggest—close to 3 million, which is more than six times higher than the government has acknowledged and the largest number of any country. The finding could prompt scrutiny of other countries with anomalously low death rates.
byu/MistWeaver80 inscience
Hospitals struggled to keep up with the influx of patients, resulting in a severe shortage of life saving materials like masks, sanitizers, beds, oxygen cylinders and other essentials. Countries like Brazil and India officially reported a death toll in excess of half a million, painting a grim picture of just how desperate the situation was.
Conspiracy galore
Amid the chaos, social media was rife with various conspiracy theories. Ranging from how the virus was actually a bio weapon released into the world by China to how it was the beginning of a ‘New World Order’. Some believed it was a hoax orchestrated by the ‘Deep State’.
Conservative world leaders like Donald Trump also downplayed the severe impact of the pandemic, while many right-leaning influencers and supporters of Trump promoted pseudo-scientific treatments while also fanning the flame of conspiracy online on social media platforms like Twitter (now X). Famously, podcast host Joe Rogan defended his decision to take Ivermectin (an anti-parasitic drug used for deworming horses and cows), whilst also suggesting young and fit people don’t really need the Covid vaccine.
#Ivermectin has not been proven to treat COVID-19, and it can cause harm.
The doses needed to possibly work against COVID-19 in a test tube are 50-100x HIGHER than current recommended doses, an amount not safe in humans. #IvermectinIsNotForCOVID
📄: https://t.co/FxjN4lcFuU pic.twitter.com/xk1TGNLnnS
— IDSA (@IDSAInfo) October 13, 2021
To that end, the Covid-19 vaccines like Moderna and Pfizer and also the Oxford Astra-Zeneca were seen as a part of a secret government project to track the population via microchips in the vaccine. Yep, I know. It’s much dumber than it sounds. These are some of the more widespread ones, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. Safe to say, the pandemic has done irreversible damage to social media, and the media landscape at large, with the fringe blending with the mainstream and spreading mis-information throughout.
The aftermath
Navigating a post-covid world has been tricky, to say the least. Returning to normalcy has still been a problem for a lot of people, with far-reaching mental health effects on the collective population. Dealing with feelings of loss, social isolation and anxiety make things tricky. Not to forget, Covid-19 gave rise to ‘long covid’, where patients suffer from Covid-related symptoms for weeks, even years. Besides things going back to ‘normal’ for the most part, there are new Covid cases throughout the world, and people are still succumbing to the virus and its many mutations.
Young British tennis player Tanysha Dissanayake announces her retirement from the sport at the age of 21 because of #LongCovid.
Our best wishes go out to Tanysha.
Find her on Instagram here: https://t.co/auUdsHtHkY pic.twitter.com/zmkOzbabnk
— Long Covid Support 🌍 (@long_covid) October 11, 2022
Besides the far-reaching human impact, the economic effects remain apparent. Many researchers attribute the rising inflation, unemployment and other problems to the pandemic. As I said earlier, the media landscape too, experienced a paradigm shift, with many of the voices and narratives that were restricted to the fringes are now a part of the mainstream. Dis-information, false news and fake narratives have been on a steady rise.
It’s safe to say, the impact of the pandemic has been immense, and has changed the world. Whether that’s been for the better or for the worst, we don’t really know that yet. However, from what we’ve seen so far, it’s not a pretty sight.
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