Now, when the eyes of most Poles are turned to Ukraine, when the government announced (once again) “the beginning of the end of the epidemic” a few weeks ago and when we are all tired of restrictions and isolation, it is easy to forget about the pandemic. You will say it’s over. For those over seven thousand people around the world (including as many as 206 in Poland alone) who only killed the coronavirus yesterday, this is indeed the end. Unfortunately.
When on March 4, 2020, during a press conference, Health Minister Łukasz Szumowski informed about the first case of coronavirus in Poland, many of us were scared. However, no one expected that two years later the world would continue to fight the next variants of SARS-CoV-2, in Poland in just one year most people would lose their lives since World War II, and Szumowski … would leave the ministry in an atmosphere of scandal in August .
Do I remember that day? Yes, because all of Poland was waiting for him in suspense, knowing that the virus, then most often called the Wuhan coronavirus, will not pass our country. However, I did not think then that in just a few months I would witness tens of thousands of human tragedies, that the government would report several hundred deaths a day, that the health care system would be on the verge of collapse.
- See also: It is a man that a man needs to be happy [COLUMN]
I also did not think that for two years I would not see many friends live, most of my colleagues, and even some family members. That my home will also become an office. That I would spend Christmas without my parents.
I did not know that in two years, as many as six million people around the world will lose their lives due to SARS-CoV-2. Are you wondering if it’s a lot? Then imagine all Denmark disappearing.
I had no idea that the time of the pandemic would not only be full of fear for the health of my loved ones, but also – in all its tragedy – would be the most emotional time for me when I became a mother for the first time.
I did not think that, apart from the coronavirus pandemic, we would be flooded by an even bigger pandemic of fake news.
Despite the fact that for months we have cheered on doctors in the fight for our lives and scientists in the fight for a vaccine, now – when the preparations are already available – many do not want to get vaccinated.
Apparently, a Pole is contradictory by nature. I argue that we are more ignorant and stupid. Because how else to explain the fact that after long months many still do not wear masks or put them on their chin? That one in three of us still has not been vaccinated, despite the fact that the vaccine effectively protects against complications and death?
Two years after the first SARS-CoV-2 infection in Poland, six million deaths worldwide from COVID-19 later, still not everyone believes in a pandemic. Others believe it’s over. Even with this attitude, the end of the pandemic will come. Only how many of us will the coronavirus take away our parents, grandparents, children, friends, acquaintances, neighbors?
See also:
- Two years ago, the coronavirus reached Poland. Bow. Jacek Smykał: we cannot stand on the edge again
- 38 days in a coma. After COVID-19, she was learning to talk and walk again
- This is not the end of the pandemic. The virologist tells us what can happen in the fall