HIV, The Pandemic

HIV, The Pandemic

Diseases like HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and cancer are a menace because they had no cure. Scientists and doctors did everything within their powers to find the cure for these diseases and failed, but they were nothing like the coronavirus, the pandemic.

Coronavis started in Wuhan, China, but within a period of six months, the disease had spread to other parts of the world, and before we knew it, it had spread all over the world, killing millions of people. COVID-19 was more dangerous because it could kill the infected within a week and spread in hours.

The scariest part was that people in clinics were dying more than those at home using home remedies. The disease had similarities with influenza, a disease that also killed a lot of people in the 1990s.

COVID-19 forced people to quarantine themselves for fear of contracting or spreading the disease. The disease was one thing, but there were so many other social and economic problems that came with it. People lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

Imagine if you are a sole trader, a vendor, and you cannot go to the street to sell your air time or tomatoes because it becomes illegal to be walking around selling things or just walking around without any proper reason. You had to have a verifiable emergency to be allowed to walk around. Now this meant all those who left through vending could not do their job. Hunger struck their homes. If COVID didn’t kill you, hunger might.

HIV and AIDS can only be contracted if there is blood contact between the infected and the other person. Which means it is something that you could try to avoid. COVID could be contracted through surfaces or air droplets, which was a bit difficult to prevent even if you wore a mask. You could still touch something that was touched by someone with the disease. This causes fear and unrest between people, especially in families. People started being suspicious of one another. You can imagine what it did to people who were once close; now they cannot hug each other because the other is afraid that they might hug a neighbor with the infection.

Cases of gender-based violence even increased among married people. Couples are not used to spending every second together because everyone is hustling for more. Then COVID came, and there was lockdown; everyone was home. That is when most people realized that they were not so much in love as they thought.

Those who were creative enough took advantage of the pandemic and made something out of it. Online businesses have become a thing. All you needed to do was order what you needed, and you could get it at your doorstep. Because you are a vendor and you can’t go in the streets to sell your goods, the Internet became a very important tool to advertise and connect buyers with sellers, and for those who were good enough, they made fortunes out of it.

We are on our way out of danger, but the pandemic made history; it made us realize that every single day should be cherished and that tomorrow is not promised. Most of its results were negative, but for the creatives, they saw an opportunity out of it.