COVID-19 PROPHECIES

I know what you're thinking right now. Chris wants to bore us with a tally of the numerous prophecies about the coronavirus outbreak that never saw the light of day. They all miserably came unstuck in the nebulous fantasies in which they were spoken. Now, like the aftermath of a dirty slap in the face, many of their speakers are seeing stars in a darkness.

COVID-19 has dealt a hard and rough blow to the world, leaving many of its victims groveling on the hard floor, among them many hapless prophets. Why won't Chris leave these misshapen prophets alone to quietly lick their wounds like the rest of COVID's victims?

At your special request I'm going to. You actually read me wrong. The title of this article is not about those prophets really. It is about your latest prophet in town: me! Yours truly!

Yes, COVID's blows are clinical, but I'm not afraid of them. At the risk of joining the other prophets on the floor, I want to prophesy too.

COVID-19 has thrown into common lexicon some new words and phrases like 'social distancing,' 'flattening the case curve,' 'Wuhan,' 'Dr Fauci,' 'respirator,' 'community spread,' 'lockdown,' 'pandemic.' Wow, even Buhari used this last one and pronounced it correctly!

These are words and expressions that you probably were familiar with before COVID stepped rudely on the stage. Well, not yours truly. But I prophecy to you that in the days to come the phrase 'New Normal' is going to break forcefully into our lexicon, too. You will find out what it means when it arrives but you won't like it. Watch out.

The name COVID-19 itself arrived as a mystery to me. It is only recently I found out it's a coinage from Corona Virus Disease 2019! Ingenious.

I look in my crystal ball and I see you not shaking hands soon, no matter what experts advise. They have failed you in the past, so you're not going to trust them. When the preacher says in church, "Look at your neighbour and congratulate him or her," you're going to turn and look at them with a foolish and confused expression on your face. Trust me. If anybody as much as mistakenly touches your hand, you're going to feel absolutely undone. You will rush to the nearest tap and wash off the abomination!

For a long time to come everyone will look like a suspect to you, except your wife or husband. You will take the risk because, you see, you can't control yourself. You will say to yourself, "No be once person dey die?" You will not fear death when it comes to that one.

I look in my crystal ball and I see you adding a second mask to your face before stepping into a big market, until you begin to choke. You will pray before entering a keke because they will not operate with any modicum of social distancing. The psyche of their drivers is not wired for such things.

I see transport and airfares tripling. Somebody has to pay for the empty seats! And there will be scrambles for seats at bust stops and motor parks. It's another way of saying to you, "Siddon where you dey."

Mosques and Church auditoriums will wear a new look. People will sit as if they're enemies, and pastors of churches that have refused to grow and who have been yearning for multiple services so they can be like their competitors will finally have their opportunity. Entire congregations will look like ghosts in their masks. It will be an odd spectacle. The preacher's voice will be muffled by his funny mask. The microphone won't help, and he will feel uncomfortable.

I look in my crystal ball and see a deluge of discarded  masks and rags littering our streets. COVID will be grinning from each piece.

I see us finally giving their well deserved due to Lagbaja and Muslim women. When they showed us how to cover our faces, we ignored them until now. I see a new fashion of colourful and to-match face and head coverings emerge among women. Geles will take on a new life. I even see some overzealous people outdoing Lagbaja. They will appear in church wearing head-to-foot gears like astronauts. They don't trust anybody, whatever their claim to holiness.

I look in my crystal ball and see that schools will be our biggest headache by far, the reason nobody is thinking about opening them soon. Everyone is confused over this one. School is one place we cannot realistically do social distancing because of general lack of classroom infrastructure; plus the fact that children have a natural tendency to huddle, rather than isolate, nor do they appreciate what this whole hullabaloo is about. We send them to school to learn, but they simply want to play. Who's going to stop them?

As governments begin to relax the lockdown, I see people behaving like caged animals finally set free. Because the general appreciation of the science of the plague here is very low among the populace, they will err on the side of foolishness rather than caution. I see a vista of people carelessly giving the virus free room to ravage. After all, the virus doesn't necessarily go away. It is our behaviour as its agents that determines its own behaviour.

I have spoken, and I dare COVID to prove me wrong. I'm not like the other prophets!