Dear Coronavirus, can we have a Happy New Year please?

Dear Coronavirus,

I am not sure if you will read this. But with the world still trying to figure you out, I decided I would reach out to you.

As a journalist, I couldn’t think of a better way of going about it than by writing to you. So here I am in all earnestness and humility.

I realise you are terribly busy these days. After all, 280 million – and counting – visitations a day across vastly spread geographies – can by no means be easy. And each time, to spring a surprise must be that much more of a task.

I must say the power you currently wield is sweeping. Stupefying even, considering you are invisible, yet have such a visible impact.

I read somewhere that under a microscope, where you do offer glimpses of yourself, the tiny protein protrusions on your being are a halo-like corona, which, I believe, explains your name. Very apt indeed.

But dear Corona, if I may call you that, your mastery is our mystery; your halos our gallows; your roll our toll.

As you are well aware, we are still counting our losses from your first onslaught, not to mention your subsequent strikes.

You changed the way we live and die, our very concept of a ‘hi’ and ‘bye’.

We didn’t know what hit us, so we just strapped our mouths and stood with due distance apart.

We told ourselves no hug, no handshake, no hi-five, so we could survive.

We brought our schools and our offices home, and didn’t dare venture out of town. Yet, you hunted us down.

Why, oh, why?

Time, dear human, to learn your lessons, do I hear you say?

Cut the excess, go slow, look inwards, and all of that, pray?

Well, believe me, we took the sage advice. And while we were on the course-correct, we also caught up on our lessons in Science. You know as well as we do that it took us the shortest time ever in history – both yours and ours – to manage a shot in the arm. But just when we thought our vaccines were getting the better of you, you changed your form and were back with a bang.

From your breaking COVID-19 avatar to the deadly Delta and the now raging Omicron, you continue to take us by storm. And as you put us through test after test, being positive has become the most negative aspect of our lives.

But I think I am getting the drift now. Having ripped through the frontiers of Science, like nothing else has in our times, you are pushing us to go the limit and beyond.

I assure you we are on the job. We’ll crack that code and make you proud soon enough.

But till such time, can we just be?

It’s a while now, you will agree.

Can we have a genuinely Happy New Year, please?

Goodbye.