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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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<h1 class="reader-title">COVID-19 vs. Panic-2020<br>
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<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/mucruf/"
rel="nofollow">Nilantha Ilangamuwa</a> - March 20, 2020</span></div>
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<p>Worldwide stock markets are crashing. Arbitrary travel
bans are being imposed. Huge queues before supermarkets
are a daily experience. Most of the airports are empty.
The future of airlines is in a stalemate state.
Skepticism among general public is higher than ever.
Science has been replaced with panic. One wonders
whether we are travelling towards another Great
Depression.</p>
<p>Thanks to social media owners and breaking news
engineers are mounting profits by selling the privacy
and shrinking space of individual liberty of every man
and woman on the planet. They have manufactured a new
social order of control based on panic.</p>
<p>In this new social order, there is no mechanism to hold
responsibility and accountability of those who are
engineering self-thoughts as news. Therefore, an action
of a social media user can cause maximum damage, despite
the distance at which the user is residing.</p>
<p>The drama on novel-coronavirus, which is now officially
named as SARS-CoV-2 and the disease is now called
COVID-19, is yet another case study to understand the
pitiful social reality we are compelled to live in. The
sad part of this novel social order is that this has
been ignored and sidelined for the very reasons we ought
to be afraid of. Let’s unveil some of them.</p>
<p>Yes. Annually, there are an estimated 1 billion cases
of the flu worldwide, resulting in about 650,000 deaths,
while there are only approximately 134,000 confirmed
cases of COVID-19 worldwide till date. Fatality rate of
the COVID-19, according to experts of the subject, is
around 3-4 per cent. We are way more likely to contact
the flu than the novel coronavirus.</p>
<p>The story does not end there. Let me keep aside the
human cost of terrorism and extremism as well as the
nuclear threats for the time being. Here are some of the
facts compiled from the reports by the United Nations
and its related bodies on global challenges due to our
life style based on deliberate ignorance and cynical
manipulation.</p>
<p>There are more than 1billion people suffering from
hunger. What does it mean? One in every seven people on
this planet doesn’t get sufficient food. In the last few
months of this year, the number of death due to hunger
are over 1.7 million. Statistics showed that around 9
million people die annually in hunger. Out of the total
fatalities, there are 6 million children die in hunger
annually worldwide.</p>
<p>According to the WHO statistics, “around 7 million
people die every year from exposure to fine particles in
polluted air that lead to diseases such as stroke, heart
disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary
diseases and respiratory infections, including
pneumonia.” 91% of total populations are living in
polluted air.</p>
<p>There over 3.5 million people die every year from
water-related diseases. The painful reality of this
number is that over 2.2 million of those deaths are
children.</p>
<p>There are around 800,000 people committing suicide
every year on this planet. This meant, as per WHO
documented, one person, committing suicide in every 40
seconds. According to the WHO, “Suicide occurs
throughout the lifespan and is the second leading cause
of death among 15-29-year-olds globally.”</p>
<p>Every year natural disasters kill around 90000 people
and affect close to 160 million people worldwide.
Natural disasters include earthquakes, tsunamis,
volcanic eruptions, landslides, hurricanes, floods,
wildfires, heatwaves and droughts.</p>
<p>Approximately 1.35 million people die each year as a
result of road traffic crashes. 93% of the world’s
fatalities on the roads occur in low- and middle-income
countries, even though these countries have
approximately 60% of the world’s vehicles. Road traffic
injuries are the leading cause of death for children and
young adults aged 5-29 years.</p>
<p>The harmful use of alcohol results in 3.3 million
deaths each year. Some 31 million persons have drug use
disorders. Almost 11 million people inject drugs, of
which 1.3 million are living with HIV, 5.5 million with
hepatitis C, and 1 million with both HIV and hepatitis
C.</p>
<p>A new United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
study revealed that some 464000 people across the world
were killed in homicides in 2017, surpassing by far the
89000 killed in armed conflicts in the same period. The
study shows that the overall number of people who
suffered a violent death as a result of homicide
increased in the past quarter of a century, from 395542
in 1992 to 464000 in 2017.</p>
<p>The studies revealed that 35% of women worldwide faced
some kind of sexual harassments in their lifetime. Only
10% of those victims will seek help from law enforcement
agencies. UN Women have shed light on the horrendous
situation of the women in their reports. “It is
estimated that of the 87000 women who were intentionally
killed in 2017 globally, more than half (50000- 58 per
cent) were killed by intimate partners or family
members, meaning that 137 women across the world are
killed by a member of their own family every day. More
than a third (30000) of the women intentionally killed
in 2017 were killed by their current or former intimate
partner.” Unfortunately, sexual harassments faced by men
were not official countered but daily newspaper reports
shedding light on the grim situation of this putrid
criminal act.</p>
<p>The list is going on and on and on. The question is why
poor people are suffering and their urgent crisis is
being ignored? Why is it less important for key players?
Are they sons and daughters of lesser-God?</p>
<p>Alas! Do we have any substantive plan to address those
immediate challenges, though the United Nations and
other related bodies that have introduced the
Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved? Our
trajectory situation is much deeper than we think.</p>
<p>The world population could be too big to feed itself in
30 years from now. According to Edward Wilson,
socio-biologist, Harvard University, “If everyone agreed
to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for
livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable
land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion
people.” The food crisis is coming much faster than the
climate change, he has warned in his book “The Coming
Famine”.</p>
<p>We don’t have sufficient seafood to cater to the market
28 years from now. “The world’s oceans could be
virtually emptied of fish by 2048. A study shows that if
nothing changes, we will run out of seafood in 2048. If
we want to preserve the ecosystems of the sea, change is
needed.”</p>
<p>Drinking water is another major challenge we are
facing. Most of the countries are already victims of
serious drinking water crisis but unfortunately, most
people are keeping on discussing what caused damage to
drinking water. If this continued, the planet will be
out of drinking water in 20 years from now.</p>
<p>We don’t have a constructive plan with decisive actions
to protect our rainforests. In 80 years from now,
remaining rainforests on the planet will be annihilated.
“In the year 2000, half of the world’s rainforest had
been wiped out. If we continue the rate of destruction,
the rainforests will be gone at the end of the century,
according to NASA.”</p>
<p>There are 152 million children between the ages of 5
and 17 working as child labourers. Reports suggested,
“The UN Sustainable Development Goals include ending
child labour in all its forms by 2025.” But the goal is
slipping. According to the International Labor
Organisation’s report, “Ending child labour by 2025”,
“maintaining the current rate of progress would leave
121 million children still engaged in child labour in
2025”.</p>
<p>Do you know that there are more people in slavery today
than at any other time in human history? The reports
suggest the gruesome reality of slavery by noting that,
“40 million people are living in slavery right now”. Out
of this 40 million, 10 millions are children.</p>
<p>We are ending our resources, and replacing them with
wastes. “Every year we dump a massive 2.12 billion tons
of waste. If all this waste was put on trucks they would
go around the world 24 times.” Five plastic garbage
patches across the world’s oceans are mounting. It is a
matter of a few years where there will be oceans without
fishes. “The UN estimates that 51 trillion microplastic
particles are present in oceans. That’s 500 times more
than the total number of stars in our galaxy.”</p>
<p>Bottom line is that we are running out of everything,
but we still pay less serious attention to the true
crises. Our policymakers and key players are continued
to bark up the wrong trees. Our selfish motivations will
not give any chance to future generation to live happily
but suffer from unpredictable scenarios. The world
requires global disciplinary action to prevent the
looming danger.</p>
<p>But, who cares? Today the entire world is paying
attention to COVID-19, which is a lesser danger than
many issues in our front yards. True, COVID-19 is not a
thing of little seriousness, but it still can be tracked
and cured in a collective effort based on scientific
actions by leaving it to the experts to take required
actions. Unfortunately, unnecessary panic and
unreasonable doubt are widespread. Now it is a battle
between COVID-19 vs. Panic-2020. Panic-2020 is more
dangerous and vicious than the COVID-19. Unfortunately
this has created ambiguity while preventing the
opportunity to understand the true picture of COVID-19.
Is this how are we going to end the world?</p>
<p><em>(The views expressed in this article are the
writer’s own and do not reflect the official policy or
position of any other organisation or employer he is
affiliated to.)</em></p>
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<p> <i>Nilantha Ilangamuwa is a Sri Lankan born author. He
was the-editor of Sri Lanka Guardian, an online daily
newspaper. He was also the editor of the Torture: Asian
and Global Perspectives, bi-monthly print magazine,
co-published by the Danish Institute Against Torture (
DIGNITY) based in Copenhagen, Denmark.</i> </p>
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