New words and phrases now define our vocabulary,
So out with the old and in with the new conditioning,
Covid-19 is changing our lives, and so scarily,
that now nothing is more important than Social Distancing.
The new challenge is WFH, or Working from Home,
so before we sit at our desks, we perform Handwashing.
20 seconds they say, lather up and produce plenty of foam,
And then learn all about Videoconferencing.
Press the reset button, give yourself some new tasks,
our greatest desire is not riches but Flattening the Curve.
We are in a new normal, all scrambling for N95 masks,
which is the only product that can settle your shattered nerve.
We used to know all about New York, Paris and London,
and frequenting fancy restaurants with white-gloved waiters.
Now, we know every medical fact about Wuhan,
and the difference between ventilators and respirators.
Today, your most precious possession is hand sanitizers.
If you go out, Droplets are to be avoided like the plague.
So ensure that Panic Buying includes a helmet with visors,
And hope that Community Spread does not become a rage.
For entertainment we saw movies featuring superheroes,
Now our greatest obsession is a fear of Superspreader.
We avoid physical contact, for how long nobody knows,
and watch TV replays of matches featuring Roger Federer.
When we were in boarding school, they gave us quinine,
And taught the difference between Epidemic and Pandemic,
But there were no Tests on surviving under Quarantine,
or how watching TV news could bring on so much panic.
Locked in Isolation, whether by choice or official decree,
we spend our time in designing Face Coverings of triple ply,
and trying get your hands on something called PPE,
or Personal Protection Equipment which is in short supply.
Our survival depends on a process called Contact Tracing
and Herd Immunity which may put an end to this crisis.
It’s a bleak and forbidding future we are all facing
all thanks to a strange disease called Coranavirus.
Lead picture: UNI