‘The virus put truth back into business’

I see 2020 as a year of opportunities. The world had seen far worse pandemic, a century ago, in the form of Spanish Flu, yet the humankind had bounced back, as if 1% of global population didn’t die. Covid, comparatively, is less fatal. Yet, I have a feeling that Covid’s impact is going to be much more than it is more lethal ancestor.

Covid came at a time when fake news and post-truth were having a merry time. The virus put truth back into business. With much-discussed, mass-tested, peer-reviewed making of anti-virus vaccine, science took centre stage. In a world which was dominated by memes and other perception-altering ephemera, time-consuming journeys of vaccines through several stages, enjoined humanity with reality once again. Also, there was data. Still, there is daily wait for headline figures of infected people and deaths. Data, far from being something to be manipulated, became a matter of life and death.

At the mundane level, from the drop in number of attendees at marriages and funerals to extinction of made-up bonhomie over beverages, could be transient, but online schooling and meetings seem to be here to stay. Finally, 2020 is taking a curtain-call, but the virus isn’t; that’s the sad coda of the year that went by.


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