Ah, COVID-19. Schools have been closed, businesses closed down one after another and the economies were brought to a grinding halt. People have been forced to wear uncomfortable masks and maintaining strict safe distancing measures. Seriously, who wouldn't want COVID-19 to not exist? I, for one, really do not like COVID-19. My family wanted to go overseas for vacation and even go to Marina Bay Sands in the June and December holidays in 2020 and the June holidays in 2021 (now). However, all of these events, that were about to commence peacefully, were all made...
JUST A DREAM.
By what horrible thing, you may ask?
COVID-19.
Many people suffered and some people even passed on due to this horrible virus. However, every cloud has a silver lining, and however bad COVID-19 may seem, there is still a bright side to it. After I knew about this, I felt that...
I just shouldn't hate COVID-19.
Why?
Well, read to find out!
Last year, when there was a spike in COVID-19 cases in many countries, most of them went into lockdown. Only essential workers (doctors, food deliverers etc.) and people shopping for groceries were allowed to go out of their homes. People who worked in offices were forced to work from home. As a result, fewer people drove on the roads, so less carbon monoxide was emitted. This helped countries with severe air pollution reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air. Delhi is one example. Please look at this screen recording showing how much COVID-19 helped to remove harmful gases from the air. (credits to BBC)
Can you believe how much COVID-19 reduced the amount of harmful gases? It is so shocking!
You know, one of the refrains that we are hearing as COVID-19 spreads is to quit smoking. However, do you know that 90% of people worldwide are exposed to high levels of air pollution? Living in Delhi around October 2019 was like smoking 6 cigarettes a day!
During the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak in China, a study by researchers at UCLA's School of Public Health showed that victims of SARS were more than twice as likely to die from the disease if they came from areas of high pollution than areas with low pollution!
So everyone, can we try to keep pollution low like now without needing COVID-19 to help us?
This is something like humanity does not know how to ride a bicycle, and COVID-19 is the coach. The coach trains us vigorously and throws big challenges at us (people infected and died, businesses closed down, schools closed...). However, he also encourages us, "Come on, you can do it!" So, can we come together as one and do our part to reduce pollution? Reducing pollution is like learning to ride a bicycle. Once we have learnt how to ride a bicycle, we don't need our coach to be there to hold us all the time as we can cycle ourselves, like reducing pollution without coach COVID-19. We shouldn't hate COVID-19 for the difficulties it threw at us, neither should we give up and not follow the safe distancing measures. We should thank it for teaching us how to "ride a bicycle" and learn how to quickly as it wants to "retire".
- Theodore Teh
(founder of this website)
Comentarios