UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says that with the coronavirus epidemic, the world is facing the greatest challenge since World War II.
As I sit isolated, recovering from a thankfully mild attack, I have had time to reflect on how different people have reacted to this crisis.
When China first announced the virus and how it was spreading, and also that many adults, especially elderly, were dying from it, I think the first response of most of us was denial.
‘Maybe they just don’t know how to deal with it’ or ‘it’s just a local Chinese problem, but unlikely to spread over here’ or ‘it’s really not much more than influenza and we have had that before’.
It soon became clear that it was spreading throughout the world, that it was extremely contagious, and it could be lethal at any age. It suddenly made people feel vulnerable. It made me look at my life and say: “Well, what if I get it, and what if I end up on a ventilator?”
The pictures of rows and rows of coffins in northern Italy particularly drove home the stark reality, and many people started to take on a war mentality.
The younger generation and families with young children were reassured that the mortality in children was low. Those who were in the retirement range had to come to terms with the fact that they were the high-risk group.
Once you have in some way come to terms with your own risk of dying from this disease, and set up your defence systems, it seems that most people turn an eye of empathy to those sick, suffering and who have lost family members.
There are those who overstock on food and other essentials, probably just through stress. There are others who unfortunately saw a way of taking advantage of the situation: prices of hand gel and other essentials shot up.
And this was the least of the opportunism that we have seen, you would think...
One thing about isolation is that it gives you time to think. There is the silence, and boredom, whereas usually we are rushing round in noise. And then there is the sudden unexpected confrontation with our mortality as we see people in places ever closer dying from this virus.
Maybe this is a message from God for us to look at what is important in our life and see whether we should be more aware of His presence
Is it by chance that this was all happening in Lent? Is God telling us something through this pandemic? Even if it weren’t in Lent it is enough to get us thinking about life, death and our horizons.
What do we see as important? Maybe this is a message from God for us to look at what is important in our life and see whether we should be more aware of His presence.
When I realised I had COVID-19, seeing that I am within the high-risk age group, I did feel I had to review what I was doing.
I became uncomfortable sitting doing nothing in a flat with a fridge full of food, so I applied to re-join the NHS as they have requested recently retired people to do.
I am fortunate to be able to do this, and I’m sure that many would do so too if they could. I know that many have enough work on their plates keeping their family and themselves safe and earning something to keep going.
It can be easy to keep your head down on your original goals and take this pandemic as a personal challenge to overcome or even to take advantage of.
It was with great sadness that I read how the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, rushed the world’s most extreme abortion legislation into law while everyone was distracted with the coronavirus pandemic.
This, to my mind, is using one evil to leverage another one.
But you know where this virus comes from just by looking at it. It has evil looking, hook-like receptors all over it which make it easy to attach itself on to your respiratory lining.
Evil brings evil, but we can be protected by good. There have been very few deaths from coronavirus in Malta to date, thank God, and I like to think that the fact that we haven’t allowed abortion into Malta has given us some protection against it.
It is easy when confronted by something like this to begin to fear and to think that the future is going to be so complex, particularly if in addition to having to face this you have to face something unexpected like a pregnancy.
But difficult times call for a little courage and for us to raise our eyes to that blue eternity we can so easily see.
Those who strive to bring abortion into Malta, despite or because of the pandemic that has hit us, are not working with the lifesavers that are struggling in hospitals around the world, but against them.
But for Malta’s sake, for their own sakes and their vulnerable infant’s sake, they should look up and fight against this evil that threatens us not add on to it.
Patrick Pullicino, Catholic priest in London and retired NHS neurologist