FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024
Alexandre Moniz Barbosa
Christmas wishes that have gone around, and those for the New Year that have already started have a common theme that in other times would not have made it in the greetings for the season. While wishing that Christmas be merry and that the New Year be happy and prosperous, an addendum hopes that the pandemic will subside and that 2022 will be much better. There is nobody in the world that would not want to see the end of the pandemic. That wish encapsulates what 2021 and 2020 have been to a lot of people across the world – a time of suffering everywhere in the world, and we in Goa were not spared it either.
This is the last weekend of 2021. It’s been a year of turmoil, when thousands lost family members to the pandemic, and lakhs got infected by the virus. Goa will perhaps never have a year such as this again. At least not in the foreseeable future, unless the new variant of the COVID-19 virus spreads, bringing new restrictions. If 2020 and the lockdowns were an unfathomable experience months later appears surreal in nature, 2021 was a different experience altogether. In 2020 the pandemic was a mere shadow of what would unfold in 2021 and instead of being locked up at home, people watched as their family members gasped for oxygen and breathed their last. While this happened, for the rest of the people, it was statistics of COVID cases and deaths that they read about in the newspapers and got as alerts on their smartphones.
We began the year with much hope as a vaccine for the virus was unveiled and cases showed a downward trend, despite dire predictions of an increase due to the mass gatherings on the beaches to ring in the New Year. The latter didn’t happen, thankfully, and the first of the vaccine doses were administered to medical professionals and those working in health care. It was then that the mistakes began. Goa relaxed and within weeks the COVID graph went steeply uphill to cross 4000 cases a day and 40 deaths in a 24-hour period. Those figures were unimaginable for a State like Goa and they added to the total cases, which as we come to the end of the year, almost 12 per cent of the population has already suffered from COVID-19.
The pandemic is something that few experience. It comes once every century. If you are reading this, then it’s because you have survived it. In Goa, over 3500 people did not. The pandemic took them. And though we hope for a better year ahead, the pandemic is not over yet. The new variant casts a long shadow over the coming year. During the past week, the Centre asked States to activate war rooms and night curfews should the situation warrant these measures. Clearly, the government is taking no chances. The devastating second wave is too fresh for any administration to forget what havoc the virus is capable of wreaking. Besides, the omicron variant of the virus has swamped parts of Europe and it is spreading fast.
The pandemic has changed something for everyone. There cannot be a single person who can say that life is the same as it was 21 months ago. Something would be different. And unusual it also was in more ways than one.
If the pandemic brought suffering, it also saw lots of people in a very different light. Goa’s handling of the pandemic could have been so much more professional if only the government was able to fully support what the healthcare professionals were doing as the second wave engulfed the State. Doctors and medical professionals in the public and private sectors worked beyond what was humanly possible with the limited facilities at their disposal, doing what they could to alleviate the suffering of their patients. Many of the sick returned home from hospital fully recovered, a testimony to the human talent Goa has and which cared for the patients. They have been the real heroes of this year and they deserve the gratitude of the entire Goan community as they served not just who turned up at the hospital doors, but all those who were affected by the virus and got treated at home. Doctors, nurses, support staff of government and private hospitals have done what few others did during the crisis. It’s unfortunate that they are forgotten and that the political class get the accolades. And, that is the reason why we have to remember them for what they have done during this year and the last.
There were other heroes. People, youth and others who had no political ambitions, emerged from the relative safety of their homes to help those who were in need during those weeks when the second wave of the pandemic raged. They did what they could, bring food to patients and their relatives and whatever else could be done, even delivery of oxygen cylinders when the government was unable to do it. And then as the crisis abated, they returned to their homes not once seeking to bask in the limelight of being social workers or claiming that they had done something for which they had to be thanked. They were the true social workers, who did without asking for anything in return, unlike the many others who draw mileage of the charity and social work they do.
In a matter of days, the New Year will dawn and 2021 will be referred to as last year. Christmas Day has come and gone. The New Year in less than a week’s time brings hope of change despite the rapidly spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus and restrictions being imposed in some States. There is always reason to be optimistic, and Goa has managed to stay afloat despite the horrendous time it went through in April and May this year when the pandemic was at its peak. It is now almost back to normal and the expectation is that it will continue to remain so in the months of the New Year.
Alexandre Moniz Barbosa is Editor, Herald. He tweets at @monizbarbosa
