Bangladesh has been under lockdown since March 25, 2020 to control the spread of coronavirus.

April 13 was Easter Monday, an everlasting testimony to the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion and its symbolic assertion that there is life after what is perceived as death. In the midst of a somewhat stifling home confinement in fear of the ubiquitously merciless and relentlessly marauding novel coronavirus, somehow the day and its symbolism was comfortingly reassuring.

My generation grew up with masked heroes. They could shoot heat beams from their eyes or knock down a skyscraper with a single punch—“kavoom”! They could lead double lives: during the day they could be aristocratic noblemen or dashing socialites, and at night, they could put on their vigilante masks and raid the neighbourhood in search of culprits and criminals.

As nearly the entire globe remains in lockdown and international travel is almost at a standstill, international meetings are being cancelled and often replaced by conference calls on Zoom and other online meeting platforms.

I don’t remember exactly when I heard about the 2019 version of coronavirus, Covid-19, but I do know it was during my travels in Asia this past January.

Over the past few weeks, I have heard variations of “I don’t know why but I don’t think Bangladesh will be affected by Covid-19 in the way that other countries have been.”

Much has happened between the time the virus struck in Wuhan in December 2019 and now. By the time this piece appears in print more than a million and a half people around the world in more than 200 countries will have been affected and nearly a hundred thousand will have succumbed to the virus.

How will the world look like once this not-so-coveted Covid-19 crisis is over? Is this pandemic a virus-driven Ice Age that will change the world the way we know it? Can we ever go back to being normal? Or are we going to have “the new normal”?

According to newspaper reports, 10 children have already died in the CHT since the outbreak began on February 26, when the first death was reported. Another 300 children have been infected.

As the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Bangladesh economy is becoming apparent in many ways, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced a second stimulus package for the affected sectors on April 5, 2020.

The Covid-19 pandemic is still having severe impacts on many countries and it is not at all clear how long it will take to play out globally.

That capitalism is cruel should come as no surprise to those who understand either the meaning of cruelty or the logic of capitalism.

It has taken more than four decades of incredibly hard work to build up the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In fact, the first export-oriented RMG industry of Bangladesh began when Daewoo of South Korea established a joint venture in 1977, almost 43 years ago.

It has only been a month of isolation, yet it feels like “One hundred years of solitude”.

Too little money, too much screen time, and uneven distribution of household chores and childcare—a recipe made in hell.

Since December 8, 2019, when a first known case of pneumonia with unknown aetiology was found in Wuhan City, China, the world has been badly tangled up in the novel coronavirus or Covid-19.

Wars and epide-mics make the perfect bedfellows. Wars create the perfect wombs where murky diseases can gestate and then combust, wiping out entire populations as they spread around the world.

Three days ago, on March 25, listening to a briefing on the then available latest global statistics about the COVID-19, I learnt that the global total of recorded cases was then a little over 400,000, spread across over 169 countries.

Any bored individual who has nothing better to do than to read the comment threads while listening to some old songs on YouTube must have come across these two ideas: “Who is listening to this in 2020?” Or “So-and-so brought me here”.

The Great Depression of the 1930s left its mark on every society and changed the way we think about life.