Since the people began to self-isolate in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, social media users have been sharing stories on Facebook.
Some of these urge fellow citizens to be compassionate to low income communities, some express trepidation about the future, some offer criticism of how the situation is handled.
As the government imposed shut down began one Facebook user shared her own experience with isolation when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis four years ago.
“I lived through the kind of home quarantine that is needed now. I was in full isolation for two whole months. I didn’t go out, not even on the Eid day,” wrote Nujhat Ferdousy Tasnim on her public Facebook post.
It wasn’t an easy experience for Nujhat. “I couldn’t hug my mom or brother even though they were right in front of me,” she said. “But I endured it. I lived the life of a prisoner only to save others from me.”
She requests everyone to do the same during this current outbreak. “It’s not easy, but for others you must make this sacrifice,” she said.
Jennifer Chowdhury shared being apart from her parents and uncertainty about meeting them is haunting her.
“My parents are worried about me in living in Bangladesh. I’m worried about them in NYC. We’re separated by oceans but connected by catastrophe,” she writes.
Journalist Shafiqul Alam reflected on the history of how epidemics and pandemics have been recorded historically in Bangladesh, providing interesting insights on how these events have escaped proper historic documentation.
“Generations of Bengalis have grown up with natural disasters such as super cyclones, famines, pandemic, localised epidemic such as cholera, communal massacres, war and mass migration. Yet if you look for the first hand accounts of these disasters, travails and triumphs you won't find many. The number of books won't even fill up a small size shelf in a top library. Our forefathers' failures to describe some of the worst catastrophes - - both man-made and natural - - have, in my opinion, allowed these tragedies to happen again and again,” he wrote.
With fear of contamination, private hospitals are being cautious to not allow infected patients to come in. Stories of patients being turned down have emerged, and some offered first hand accounts on social media.
Ishaque Rahman Sadat expressed his indignation about how his friend’s mother died after hospitals refused to admit her.
“A preliminary X-ray of her chest showed she had patchy opacity surrounding the middle portion of her lungs, one of the many symptoms found in Coronavirus patients (the test ultimately done through IEDCR came out negative, she did NOT have Coronavirus),” He said.
After failing to get medical assistance from hospitals, the patient eventually succumbed to death. “Before the test results came in though, a doctor advised my friend’s family after seeing the X-ray that they would get no ICU-units from any hospital. And sure enough, from Apollo to BSMMU - no hospital accepted her into their ICU wards. Every single hospital refused to give her the treatment she needed, and every single one of them knowingly turned her down, resulting in her consequent death,” Sadat indignantly wrote.
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