Greed and Covid-19

Since March 11 when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus outbreak as a global pandemic, the world suffered a serious blow on many fronts.

The pandemic has claimed millions of lives worldwide without any regard for creed, colour or nationality.

It has virtually turned the globe topsy-turvy.

Survivors of the fast-spreading virus, including you and me, have now a responsibility to fight the pandemic tooth and nail until it is eliminated from the face of the earth. 

In this battle, we basically work at two levels —physical and mental or internal and external.

On external levels, we wear masks, sanitise our hands with alcohol-based hand-rub and maintain social distance.

However, behind all these actions, our mind largely determines how we feel and act in a given situation – victimised or victorious.

The actions emerging from a victimised state of mind will be different from that of the victorious.

Both the states of mind are our own production and what you choose will decide your experience of the outside world situation. 

Our mindset largely influences the quality of our life. 

Our present life is nothing but the sum of choices we  made in the past and those choices basically was the outcome of your mindset.

Mindset is nothing but a  “fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person’s  responses to interpretations of situations.”

 In this article we discuss the “greed mindset” and its relevance to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Greedy people are always obsessed with the urge to have more and more by any mean, hook or crook. 

Relating this mindset to the current pandemic, opportunists with greed mindsets  try to exploit the situation to their maximum benefit. 

These people might engage in organised crimes, including hijacking the trucks carrying essential medical supplies used in the pandemic, capturing the shipments loaded with medical equipment, manipulating the tendering process, taking advantage of the malfunctioning government systems in any part of the world.

It is this mindset that drives people to stoop low, even to the extent of stealing medicines meant for the underprivileged or for the poor and sell them to the elite class patients making a huge profit.  

Humanity has no place for people with this mindset.

A pandemic like Covid-19 opens up a sea of opportunities for greedy people as they are seen involved in clandestine activities like supplying counterfeit and substandard medicines,  vending defective personal protective equipment, overpricing essential goods and many shameful activities that are more  threatening than the coronavirus.

Greed, like any other mindset , is quite human and  found  in all walks of people irrespective of caste, creed, colour, age and nationality.

Like Covid-19, it does not see the boundaries or barriers when it infects. 

Given the speed of coronavirus transmission, criminalisation and  politicisation of Covid- 19 are the deadliest combination. 

When Covid-19 gets criminalised or politicised, it will be the worst battle to fight against—much worse than even the pandemic. 

It is time we re-examine ourselves whether we are the victims of this mindset.

The greed mindset is anyway a sick mentality. 

Let us resolve today in our fight with Covid-19  that we do not  fall prey to the  lust of the greed mindset or tolerate the people who try to exert their negative influence on us. 

It is the time for us to operate from the  confident mindset. We will always emerge victorious and defeat coronavirus, come what may.