Opinion: Forget COVID19, loneliness is the real killer and portends greater danger

Travis Kwentua

Agreed that COVID 19 is ranking the most important source of human suffering as it stands but one must come to terms to an emerging psychological trauma which is a concomitant of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This to me is proving to be more perilous and devasting.LONELINESS and Forced Confinement. The fever pitch spread of boredom across every nation on the globe is alarming. Abandonment of family members and loved ones and the castration of hope of a cure to the virus and flattening of a curve that keeps spiking Northward from daily death statistics, denial of relatives from carrying out final rights is emotionally devastating.

The martial Esque partial and not so partial lock-down of businesses and food taverns is also a lurking threat currently being glossed over by Government. The mad hysteria and impatience for an end to social distancing is a major source of concern, as the long stay-at-home-for-there’s-nothing-to-do is a pointer to the fact we have come to cherish freedom so much that our wildest indulgences have been cut short, the debauchery, flings with courtesans has emasculated many unfaithful men, women and concubines.

The constraint on religious worship has taken its toll on the daily need to involve God in all we say or do and of the need to be overly sanctimonious and reverent not to mention the castration of the contributions from zealous church cash cows to the coffers of their Overseers…Hehehe. This is really perilous!

This loss of freedom has birthed mental health issues due to stress, loneliness, boredom, depression, anxiety, relationship problems, death of a loved one, suicidal thoughts, grief, addiction occasioned by excessive bingeing this will eventually metamorphose into inclinations to anti-social behaviours and deviant tantrums, violence, stealing and riots.

The government should by any means look at alternative palliatives or be ready to face a total revolt occasioned by loneliness and mental ill-health.

People cannot continuously remain shut-in in their homes pondering what may be of their mortality and death rain like in Noah’s days flooding their mental terrain, helpless. Traces of this is seen as persistent boredom has encouraged many to flout shelter-in-place orders as they scavenge for places to get food and other bare necessities of life COVID or no COVID.This is pernicious!