Stay Home!

* Photo: Pixabay

Click to read the article in Turkish

Coronavirus is a virus that can be transmitted and spread quite easily.

We must all do our part with the utmost care so that the virus will not take on a critical dimension in our country. Isolation is, without a doubt, the most reasonable and globally accepted thing to do as individuals.

In other words, you must stay home. I know that you want to be free, I respect this desire of yours. But, as you will appreciate, there can be no freedom without life. First, a healthy life, then freedom...

You might be young. The virus could cause only a mild disease on you. You could recover from it on your feet, as if it was just an influenza. But when you transmit the disease you contracted on the street to home, you might cause your grandpa and grandma or other elderly to lose their lives.

Do you have the right to risk the life of your grandpa and grandma? I think you said you love them a lot? It is high time that you acted responsibly. You must act responsibly for your loved ones and for your society.

'Both deadly and temporary'

Look at it this way: "There is a danger outside. This danger is as deadly as it is temporary. In other words, it will last for only a limited period of time. Until this danger passes, you must spend time at your home."

You can spend your isolation days by reading a book. Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca recommended the young to read Mustafa Kutlu and Tolstoy.

Let me make another recommendation: Read Shakespeare.

Another crucial point to consider is to abide by hygiene rules. Of course, some of us will go out in public out of necessity.

Because they have to go to work or meet their vital needs... These people must stick to the memorized hygiene rules, especially their hand cleaning. Physicians have got tired of repeating: Please wash your hands thoroughly after touching somewhere. Do not touch your mouth, nose or eyes without washing your hands first. Please, be careful!

Small business owners and workers...

The biggest victims of coronavirus are small business owners and workers. The question is clear: What will do the business owners who cannot sell a single product all day do? What will do the daily wage earning laborers without any other source of income do when shops are closed?

"If these people cannot work and earn money, what will they eat and drink, how they will sustain their lives with their families at their homes?"

Who must support these people who have found themselves in a dire situation is not the People's Republic of China, I suppose.

How will we make a living?

Decision makers do not have the luxury to content themselves with saying "Everyone should declare their own state of emergency." How will we make a living? But, apparently, for some people, there is a more important and urgent issue than this: Canal İstanbul...

While people are struggling to keep healthy by walking around with masks on their mouths in these days, the first tender was lodged for Canal İstanbul. Are we supposed to say "Best wishes"? Or, maybe we should respond with this saying: The butcher thinks about the meat, the lamb about the knife...

As you know, schools are closed due to coronavirus danger. The Ministry of National Education started teaching children via distance education on March 23. But, oddly, on the first day of classes, students were made to watch a scene where Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was executed.

These images were supposed to widen the horizons of children, right? They were the products of a very modern mind, weren't they? Making children watch these images must have contributed to them as much as hanging a Prime Minister contributed to this country.

This virus-infected mind that made secondary school students watch a scene of execution must be whistled and protested with the same hands that applauded health workers at 9 in the evening.

'We are the flowers of the same garden'

I do not know if you have also seen it on social media or not. China wrote the words of Roman philosopher Seneca on the crates containing face masks bound for Italy: "We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden."

And Japan wrote the following words quoted from a "Buddhist poem" on the boxes that it sent to China: "Foreign lands separated by mountains and rivers, we share the wind and moon under the same sky."

Yes, we dream by looking at the same sky, we get warm under the same sun. Because we are on the same ship.

Do not forget that when you act irresponsibly, it will affect not only you, but the ones on the same ship with you as well. Several people can lose their lives due to a mistake that you make. Act with this in mind. Stay home.

"You stay home, I stay home so that the light will vanquish the darkness quickly..." (SA/PT/SD)