ONE hopes there will be a time when the Covid-19 pandemic will be finally over. Really over. Once that happens, people will still be scared of one another forever. They will feel the need to take unnecessary precaution even when the pandemic will be reduced to just another disease, with health establishments still demanding forced lockdowns until every last person has been vaccinated.

I do believe the vaccine is necessary. Our mindset has now changed forever though. Mental health is suffering because we cannot hug our loved ones. We cannot go abroad to see our friends or family. We are unable to form new friendships. Think of those who were lonely even before the disease. Don’t they have a right to interact with other people?

You cannot share your passions together in that one moment with social distancing. How can people freely express themselves in a small dance area, for example, if you place the markers there? We should not have to think twice about everything when the disease is no more.

Enough is enough, I guess. We cannot live our lives by the ‘this could happen again’ syndrome.

No. We need to live for today. We need to live as we did before this disease without restrictions, imprisonments, and propaganda. We all simply have to learn to live with new diseases and their variants, but make sure the good work continues in finding vaccines that stop the spread.

It is sad to admit that people have died, and others may die when new viruses emerge, but the survival of the fittest as the hallmark of Nature would prevail as has always been the case.

The world should not have to stop because of a disease; we have beaten others before, and this one, Covid-19, is nearly done. Or so one hopes. However, because of scaremongering, people will always be jumping out of the way of the others. This is a new belief system of sorts.

Once the disease has been taken care of, we need to ensure that the world does not become one big North Korea with restrictions defining lives. Once the disease has been buried as deep as it can be, life should again be about choices.

Tanya Fillbrook
Dorset, United Kingdom

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2021