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Through My Eyes

Through My Eyes

Author: Kasia Yoko
Date: 2021-06-14

'Failure is nothing more than revising your strategy' someone recently reminded me about this when I started my rhetoric regarding the true cost of the Covid Pandemic.

My heart sinks every time I get reminded about the extent that this global virus, which to date has sickened over 174 million people globally with over 3.7 million fatalities, has affected our lives.

I have stopped watching the local news channels and restricted my general news intake to a minimum. I find the news frightening and almost debilitating, so it does help to switch it off and just do other things.

Covid has been individually experienced, but globally shared. It disrupted lives across all countries and communities and negatively affected global economic growth in 2020 beyond anything experienced in nearly a century. Estimates so far indicate the virus reduced global economic growth to an annualised rate of -4.5% to -6.0% in 2020.

The human costs in terms of lives lost will permanently affect global economic growth in addition to the cost of elevated levels of poverty, lives upended, careers derailed, and increased social unrest. Some estimates indicate that 95 million people may have entered into extreme poverty in 2020 with 80 million more undernourished compared to pre-pandemic levels.

While the full economic impact of the pandemic is coming more into focus in developed economies where vaccinations are facilitating a return to pre pandemic levels of economic activity, the global impact remains less certain as new viral outbreaks have worsened the economic impact in some developing economies.

It is a sad time in the history of the world, as we know it, as the infection has affected all ofus. The only time I seem to be hearing from my friends is to warn me about the dangers of the pandemic and remind me to social distance and to wash my hands.

It saddens me how few people are actually concerned about my health, but seem more determined to scare me with their baseless predictions and send me into unnecessary panic attacks. Fourteenth century chronicler Gilles Li Muisis who lived in the time of Black Death wrote, "Neither the rich, the middling sort, nor the pauper was secure; each had to await God's will." I think about it a lot. I feel we all need to accept that we have absolutely no control over when our time to leave this earth will come. So why not just enjoy every moment, while of course being mindful of the safety measures. Warren Buffett famously said that "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked", it seems as if our vulnerability during this pandemic has been crudely exposed. Let's not give in to fear, lets unite and forge forward, somehow, together.