THREAD
Not so long ago many I'd meet would tell me how COVID19 is just another international conspiracy and that it was the west's chaal to stop Chinese economic growth. Soon it changed into another theory saying it was the opposite and that China had planned what to do to save

itself before sending the virus to the west to dominate the world as a result. At this time WHO was as confused as the rerhi wala outside our office. They said stopping international flights was an overkill and they should go on. While the east and west panicked, Pakistan

took a sane decision that we all protested - don't bring back the students from the epicentre of the outbreak, they said. Just a few days later when Iran became another Hotzone, we let the zaireen come back unlike the students. Our foreign minister now says Iran forced them

across the border. What he doesn't tell is that when they came inside Pakistan we kept them inside four walls like wild animals without water and food and started calling the places quarantine centres. The I'll and the healthy were all kept together. In parallel when the

whole world was trying to save lives by limiting gatherings and shutting down places like Kaaba, we were allowing tableeghi ijtema to happen - attended by COVID infected and just a couple of days afterwards we tried to wash that by showing Tariq Jameel and Imran Khan

doing "dour se salam". Soon Sindh would decide that enough is enough and try to put it's big cities under a lockdown - an act so disliked by the federal government that it started a mudslinging campaign against Sindh. All this while while we could invest in equipment and

quarantine/treatment facilities, we kept fighting. Federal government being at the forefront. While the rest of the world relied on extensive testing to separate the I'll from the healthy, we were doing around a hundred tests per million people with the province having the

largest number of mortalities, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, lagging behind everyone including AJK and GB. This is when the doctors were panicking because they didn't have PPEs. When Dr Usama was taking his last breathes, young doctors were being put into jail in Quetta for asking

for protective wear. While we were trying to trace, locate and quarantine people who brought it from abroad, they were out there transmitting it locally. Long after local transmission had begun, we were still trying to trace the guy who came to Mardan after an Umrah and

had already infected a whole neighbourhood. We were slow and we were not steady. When you'd tell someone to do ihteyat, mostly the answer would be "mara asay gup dai" it's a joke. From a joke it went on to hurt our religious ego and we became macho after it started to appear

in out cities and districts. Fear Allah, don't fear Corona they would say while the prime minister on TV would say "Sau mein se derh insaan Marta hai". He probably didn't know what even one and half human out of hundred meant for a population of 220 million insaan. So it

went on. And then from the districts it reached tehsils and from the cities into the sectors and municipalities and with a pinch of salt we started to shut down mosques and with no intention of doing so, a lockdown came into effect. But then instead of providing for them

the government started telling us the poor were dying and that the big Seths needed to open their factories for the poor to be re-enslaved so the poor can have do waqt ki roti and the Seth a few billion Rupees. NDMA came under discussion in the meanwhile in drawing rooms (duh)

for its fishy af tenders and procurement and an even fishier distribution and although it would later say it spend 2.5 million rupees per patient, news would have it that the funds for Corona will be utilised to cater to circular debt. The virus was looking at all this

everyday after 4 PM and around the clock on weekends because on weekdays it wasn't allowed to come out and mingle with the humans till 4PM. The sane few would tell us that it is God who is testing us, the same God who has told us that safety is farz. And that the only way

we can come out of this test is by observing that farz but how can the majority insane listen to the few sane so they went out on the street to test god. Allah pe bharosa rakho, nahi hoga corona worona. Nikalo jaloos. Allah khair karega. So the virus smiled and started to make

friendships. Until finally the government, the courts, the public, everyone was sick of the khufia talluqat and decided to go all on. Flights resumed, transport resumed, shopping resumed, insanity resumed. Eid came. I went to a Madjid for prayers as did millions others. Only

I had a mask on in the Madjid literally. Just me. Roads to Swat, GB, Kashmir were swarming with cars carrying tourists who weren't being allowed to be tourists by the police. And when the holidays are over, the virus has tricked down from cities to deep inside our whatsapp

groups, twitter, Facebook, friends circle, relatives and neighbourhoods. The whole "qaum" is coming out of denial and seeing people getting infected and dying left right and centre. Some are reported while many aren't for the fear that they won't be able to see their loved ones

one last time before the friendship with virus becomes permanent. Amidst all this panic, questions are being asked - what should we do to stop it?
The answer being: the same thing you were asked to do months ago - IHTEYAT. PRECAUTIONS. SOCIAL DISTANCING. NO CROWDS. MASKS.

while the hospitals are turning away patients after reaching their capacity, the only option all of us are left with is to stay home and be extremely vigilant when we're out. Yes it kills less than ten percent of the population but how are you so sure that you aren't in that 10%?

Apologies for the typos though. Don't be friends with Corona.