People in third world countries particularly in Pakistan often believe in conspiracy theories. These theories are often propagated by the high officials. For instance, People believed for a decade on a conspiracy theory of holy war in Afghanistan. They were also convinced by the propaganda of terrorism, Taliban and war against taliban in South and North Waziristan. In the same way, they concluded COVID19 as propaganda. In fact, some well-versed people from nationalist, liberal and religious circles were writing against the pandemic. Unfortunately, it badly affected some of these people and some of them are now buried.
In the end of March, as I came back to my hometown, I tried to take part in awareness campaign against the pandemic. But people including my family members not only refused to listen but also made joke of us. They were of the opinion that Corona is a conspiracy theory of the west. For them, Bill Gate launched this project against Muslims to take them away from their religious preaching as they are closing our mosques. Later on, they will come up with a vaccine which will erase our religious thoughts from our minds.
And others were of the opinion that it is another great game of the world powers against the developing nations. They never believed in it.
Later on, they believed it after personal infection. But they denied the fatality rate presented by media. These lethargic mentalities couldn’t think that someone can die from the pandemic. Now the fatality rate was a conspiracy for them. Finally, when they saw people dying in their families or towns, they blamed government for killing these people.
Almost same was the case with my family. The members of my family were strong supporter of Maulana Sherani’s theory of Corona. Initially, they denied it’s existence. Later on, they blamed the west for it. In third stage, they rejected the fatality rate.
It was fifteenth of Ramadan when my uncle showed it’s symptoms. He took it as normal as nothing. In his fifteenth day of continuous fever, he showed some serious signs of danger. But we were frequently visiting him without taking any preventive measures. In the third, fourth, fifth and sixth day of Eid, we had 9 covid positive patients in our family. After one week, the number of positive cases increased to 16.
Majority of them had high fever, body pain and nausea. They were badly struggling with it. But we were continuously providing them the required treatment of Corona. Luckily, fourteen of them recovered but the remaining two showed signs of breathlessness and cough. They were getting serious. Their saturation decreased to 70’s and 80’s respectively. Fortunately, one of these two’s recovered from taking some high dose of steroids for a week.
It was my father who got serious and he was shifted to the isolation ward in BMC. He spent almost two weeks in the ward where he had a 400 gm dose of Actemra and almost 40 dose of steroids and antibiotics. Fortunately, he recovered. He was recovered by the efforts Dr.Khalid Shah, Dr.Zaheer Shah and his staff. I am thankful to Dr.Mohammad Amin who saved us from a collective collapse. Today, all of us believe that we had not faced such time before.
The purpose of sharing my personal story is to make you people aware of the seriousness of COVID19. The pandemic is neither a conspiracy nor a great game. It is a very unfortunate truth of the 21st century. Please save yourself and your family from the hardship that we have faced.
- My Personal experience with the Pandemic - 17/07/2020
