"COVID-19 with all its variants has sowed fear in people’s hearts."
September 11 is not just a date. It has become synonymous to terror, destruction, death, hate, and a general sense of insecurity about our world.
Twenty years after the coordinated attacks on US soil, the world, not just Americans, is facing a new kind of terror even as the old one has not yet been completely eradicated, and even as the consequences of the fight against it have not yet been fully tallied.
These days an unseen enemy has succeeded in altering the way of life we had grown accustomed to, and has brought untold grief and suffering, not to any one country or group of people but to nearly all nations, albeit in varying degrees.
COVID-19 with all its variants has sowed fear in people’s hearts. Measures to contain it have resulted in economic hardship and the widening of the gap between rich and poor. The pandemic has caused hardship for students and teachers alike, threatening the learning of an entire generation.
It is the same virus terrorizing us all, but some have been better able to cope than others. That, in itself, is another kind of terror. If one is unlucky enough to live in a place where the response is unenlightened and even taken advantage of to advance the interests of a few, then one faces a greater danger, a higher risk.
The events of 2001 set in motion a mix of gains and losses in the international scene. What is happening now looks to be doing the same—a combination of breakthroughs and missteps that affects different people in many profound ways. We remember 9/11 and think, may we never see a similar event ever again. We think of COVID-19 and say may we beat it soon, and may we learn well from the painful lessons it leaves in its destructive path.
