Author: Mohamed

Personal Responsibility

By Mohamed · · · 2 Comments

“Human beings are selfish by nature” John Darnielle

A common thing to happen now is for a person to wake up feeling a throat ache, knowing a global pandemic is happing, and completely ignores it. Unfortunately, there is a belief that if you wore your mask and did everything right you don’t have to test for the virus. The belief that “there is no way that I am infected” cumulates in a domino effect that causes the pandemic numbers to skyrocket.

Emily Landon, the chief infectious-disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago says, “There is no way to tell the difference between cold and covid especially at the beginning.” To protect the community, it is a necessity for people to test if they feel any of the symptoms. Only 46% of people with a fever and a cough went to get covid tested according to Flutracking, a voluntary service.

In Oran during the early days of the epidemic people decided to ignore the start of the pandemic believing that they are unique. Some people believed that their pain was not the common pain that they would hear about from going around. Resulting in them later forming and joining the anti-plague efforts.

The disbelief in a pandemic exists whenever an outbreak happens. It might be human nature to believe that you are different and can’t be infected. I do acknowledge that some people might not be able to test. However, the people who, similar to the book, believe that “common” symptoms are different than theirs are putting people at risk and slowing the healing process of the pandemic.                        

Faith. Public or Private?

By Mohamed · · · Leave a comment

A journey of the plague year revolves around the experiences that the author had in plague ridden London. The Author copes with the plague and understands it thru his Christian faith. Which stemmed from reading the bible verse “Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night” (22). It is this faith that allowed him not only the ability to survive the plague but to also give reason to its existence. Similarly in the current pandemic many people have dove back into their faith. In Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, the crown prince of the UAE Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed hosted a virtual show titled ” Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis” in which he talked to many of the people who have had a tough job during the pandemic.

In his first episode he met with Dr. Omar al Derei, the executive director of Islamic affairs. In their conversation the idea of the countering the plague thru faith was the main topic of discussion. What I want to bring up is how faith is inherently different from an individualistic perspective and one from the perspective of a group. H.F wrote about his own ideas and his own perspective this is different for each person. While in the talk show the discussion was used to inform a big amount of people on the role of faith in the pandemic and its importance.

Each piece might have had a different era and very different cultures, but they have the same core. The interesting comparison between an induvials own faith and when faith is brought to the people from someone like the crown prince in order for it to be talked about and acknowledged by the public is very different. Will a person be more tempted to go into faith? Will a person feel less tempted since it can be viewed as a privet topic? These questions striked me when thinking of the two pieces in conjunction.