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The coronavirus outbreak: the greatest pandemic of the century

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Coronavirus disease or COVID- 19 is a highly contagious disease caused by the corona virus that affects the respiratory system of human beings. The most probable source of this virus is bats. It spreads mainly through saliva droplets and nose discharges when an infected individual sneezes or coughs.  

History of coronavirus in humans

The history of coronaviruses, responsible for infections in the respiratory tract, dates back to the 1960s. In the year 1965, Bynoe and Tyrrell identified a virus, BB14, found in an adult’s respiratory tract. But, the past few years have witnessed an alarming advancement of coronaviruses. Since 2003, more than 5 new coronaviruses have been detected in humans, including the chronic respiratory tract infection which resulted in significant mortality.

How COVID-19 took the shape of a pandemic?

The city of Wuhan in China was the first to report a pneumonia case of an unknown nature to the WHO County Office on December 31, 2019. It was not until January 30, 2020, almost a month after the first case was reported, that WHO declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of international concern. The novel coronavirus disease got a name, COVID-19, on February 11, 2020. As it started spreading in other countries, WHO confirmed that it is a pandemic- one that requires “urgent and aggressive action.”

The countries battling COVID-19

COVID-19 has extended its grip to at least 194 countries worldwide. As of May 6, 2020, approximately 3740583 people are still infected in different parts of the world by COVID-19. With the highest number of cases, USA tops the list of most affected countries. Spain, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Brazil are among the most affected nations.

 In the past few months, lives in these cities have gone through a sea change and the situation is still not under control. Metropolitan cities have been locked down, educational institutions, government and private offices have been shut down, airfare and trains have stopped in almost all parts of the world. Schools, colleges, and universities, cinema halls, and malls have been shut down till the situation becomes normal again.

India’s situation in the coronavirus outbreak

India reported its first COVID-19 case on January 30, 2020, found in an individual with travel history to China. As more people started getting affected, on 22 March the country observed public curfew for 14 hours, an initiative taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Nationwide lockdown started on March 24, 2020. As per data collected on 6th May, 2020, India’s number of positive cases is about to reach half a lakh.

Treatment of coronavirus

There is no particular antiviral treatment or vaccine to prevent coronavirus. The primary treatment done by doctors is supportive and symptomatic therapy. The recovery time for most people infected with it is 2 weeks. For patients with critical symptoms, it might take 3-6 weeks for full recovery. All great minds in the medical department are working day and night to develop a vaccine and experiments are going on.

Precautions and safety measures:

Protect yourself and your family from COVID-19 by taking necessary precautions as notified by public health agencies. The only way of doing that is social distancing. Maintain distance from people who are sneezing and coughing. Clean hands frequently with the help of an alcohol-based sanitizer or water and soap. Avoid touching your nose, mouth or eyes when you are in a public place. If you have a cough, fever or a breathing trouble, keep distance from other family members and get yourself tested.

Environmental benefits: the only positive side

It is difficult to look at the positive impacts of corona virus on the environmentin a time of widespread lockdowns and increasing infection rate. But, as the corona virus pandemic has left us with no choice other than staying back at homes, the air quality in several countries has improved beyond expectation. With the closure of large industries, flights grounded and reduced traffic in big cities carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide levels have decreased after several decades.

In Indian metro cities, people are finally breathing air that has relatively safer pollutant levels, thanks to the imposed lockdown. Another cheerful piece of news is that the ozone layer protecting us has started healing.

Conclusion

The pandemic has been the cause of the biggest global recession after the Great Depression. It has led to the cancellation and postponement of religious, political, cultural and sporting events, widespread shortage of supplies. The impact of the virus on economy of the affected countries is massive.

As there is no vaccine for the treatment of this illness, social distancing and practicing respiratory etiquette are the only ways of stopping the spread of this deathly virus. Let us keep our dear ones safe and hope that we can go back to the normal course of life soon.

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Why is it important to keep yourself updated with currents affairs and news?

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Staying updated with the latest news and happenings around the world is very important for all. Knowing the latest news and updates and new events which are occurring every now and then in your country, or some other countries or may be within your state, is necessary, as these occurrences may have direct or indirect effect to your life. You must always listen to or read the current news on TV, radios, or newspapers, as much as possible. This will give you an idea of the happenings and events around you, especially about economic news, political news, business and finance related news, general current events, and other global news.

These news updates will also bring a large number of benefits for everyone. You can make and rely on your future decisions based on more realistic and plausible information. You can also identify the threats and opportunities from the very early age in your life. Hence you can shape the strategy and goal of your future profile and company, as you will gain a tremendous competitive edge. If you want marketing or sales oriented jobs as your career, then the knowledge of the latest news and keeping you updated will really help you. You can spot all the sales opportunities which will come your way at any point of time. Hence, we can conclude that keeping yourself updated with the latest news and current happenings, has its own advantage. 

How to keep yourself updated with current affairs and news?

We came to know that latest news and current affairs play an important role in our lives. But how can someone keep himself updated with those news is something we must talk about. Here are some tips which will help you in keeping touch with the latest news:

1. Read newspapers regularly: It is a good habit. Take any newspaper every day. Make a time slot. Read the newspaper daily. Go through it from beginning to end once. Then read the important news items and the news items of your interest diligently. If possible make notes of the important points. If you are reading about controversies, then gather information of economic, political and social background of the happenings. Mark the critical issues. Find out about the people who are expressing their views and opinions. Understand their perspectives and viewpoints about those issues. Think about the news and biases from different angles, and try to have your own viewpoint about the issues as well.

2. Do a SWOT analysis: After analyzing the issues think about the solutions. Do not forget you’re also a responsible citizen of your country and hence you may also have a view point and opinion of your own, about those issues. 

3. Always think of a solution to a crisis: You just cannot read about a crisis and forget about it then and there and leave the matter. It’s very important that you try to analyze the situation, discuss with your friends, parents, teachers and others, and get their views as well. You will enjoy the discussions as well as some of the opinions may change the scenario as well. 

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Pathetic –the worst hit

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Meaning of Pathetic

Pathetic means evoking or expressing pity, sympathy at it’s highest level of empathy. Of all the fallacies which man hugs to his bosom, the one characterized by Ruskin as “the pathetic fallacy” is the most common to romantic poets. As generally applied, “the pathetic fallacy” imputes to Nature the appropriate emotional states of the despairing, joyful or ironic poet. Poe’s croaking ravens and ghastly rushing rivers were clear examples; T. S. Eliot used the same stage effects in more modern terms. Last week a new poet struck his lyre, and to ears that could remember echoes, the minor strains were far. If you delineate a person as pathetic, you express that they are upset and weak or helpless, and they make you feel very sorry for them.

Now, as long as we see that the feeling is accurate, we pardon or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight.

Literature – use of pathetic :

The phrase pathetic is a term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found.  It is sometimes used as a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The well known British cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in one of his work, Modern Painters (1856).

Science-use of Pathetic

In science, the term “pathetic “is used in a derogatory way to discourage the kind of symbolic speech in descriptions that might not be strictly accurate and clear, and that might communicate a false impression of a natural phenomenon. An example is a metaphorical phrase “Nature abhors a vacuum“, which contains the suggestion that Nature is capable of hating something. 

Another example is the expression, “Air hates to be crowded, and, when compressed, it will try to escape to an area of lower pressure.” It is not accurate to suggest that air “hates” anything or “tries” to do anything. One way to express the ideas that underlie that phrase more scientifically can be found and described in the kinetic theory of gases: effusion or movement towards lower pressure occurs because unobstructed gas molecules will become more evenly distributed between high- and low-pressure zones, by a flow from the former to the latter.

Pathetic situations for Indian cinema

When it comes to Bollywood, beliefs have always been inconsistent.

Indians, for decades, have felt the West closed its eye to Bollywood’s language of expression and chose to look at only a section of regional cinema selectively.

The West, on its part, always thought of Bollywood as Hollywood’s poor cousin and never felt it necessary to acknowledge its existence.

The mainstream Hindi cinema never stood a chance at the Oscars or other prestigious film festivals. Understandably, Government of India never sent them as the official entry.

However, all perceptions changed when Aamir Khan’s Lagaan received an overwhelming  reception across the film capitals of the world.

With increasing Bollywood consciousness across the globe, the Government of India too realized that sending masala stuff was no faux.

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Tragedy is co-related with human life

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Definition :

The tragedy is the word derives from the Greek tragōidia. It is a consequence of Drama portrays on human suffering, Pain, on slaughter etc. In Drama, it follows catharsis or to please the audiences. In many houses of Drama used this paradoxical response of audience from the historical time. The tragedy is very much relevant consequence of human life, and that leads to a Drama primarily even in Western Culture.

History :

Two thousand five hundred years ago in the theatre of ancient Greece,  only a part  of  the  work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as many segments  of  other poets; through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Jean Racine, and Friedrich Schiller to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg; Samuel Beckett’s modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering; Müller’s postmodernist re workings of the tragic canon, tragedy has the essential role of insight s of Human habits, nature and culture. Many philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analyzed, speculated upon, and criticized the time.

Tragedy in Literature:

 Aristotle’s Poetic drama  in 335 BCE  tragedy has been used to make distinctions in that time. if it is a stage of general poetry in epic or lyric or at the scale of the Drama as tragedy opposes comedy. In the modern time , tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the narrow sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterition from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects (non-Aristotelian Drama and Theatre of the Oppressed, respectively) against models of tragedy. Taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation.

 In 1515 Gian Giorgio Trissino and  Vicenza wrote his tragedy Sophonisba where the princess in drunk position the works of Sophocles, Seneca, and Euripides, as well as comedic writes Aristophanes, Terence and Plautus, were available in Europe and the next forty years saw humanists and poets translating and adapting their tragedies. In the 1540s, the European university setting (and primarily, from 1553 on, the Jesuit colleges) became host to Neo-Latin theatres his written by scholars. The influence of Seneca was particularly strong in its humanist tragedy. His plays, with their ghosts, lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory, brought a concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action to many humanist tragedies.

Tragedy of Shakespearian Time :

The most important sources for French tragic theatre in the Renaissance were the example of Seneca and the precepts of Horace and Aristotle (and contemporary commentaries by Julius Caesar Scaliger ), plots were taken from classical authors such as Plutarch, Suetonius,from the Bible models were also supplied by the Spanish  Golden  Age playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega, many of whose works were translated and adapted for the French stage. The most successful tragedies of William  Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries. Shakespeare’s tragedies  Antony and Cleopatra,  Coriolanus, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth King lear etc.

The Tragical  History of Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine the Great and John Webster ‘s The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil.

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