CORONAVIRUS, CONSPIRACY THEORIES, AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES IMPLEMENTED IN PAKISTAN AND BEYOND: THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS DOGMA The Influence of Religious Dogma Section Articles

Abstract

The year 2020 came up with lethal Coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) in Chinese city of Wuhan. However, the spread of Coronavirus didn’t confine itself to China rather within a very short time span it engulfed almost whole world marking its presence in almost 220 countries. There is hardly any country in the world without a patient of Coronavirus but countries such as USA, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, France, India, Iran were badly affected as the number of patients are in a very high figures. Almost all countries despite the best medical facilities and all possible measures have nearly failed to save its people from falling prey to its attacks. Pakistan was probably on safer side earlier on but due to the negligence, religious mindset, violation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and above all strong faith in conspiracy theories people didn’t take the existence as a reality. Such aforementioned factors have now resulted in an ever-imagined increase of Coronavirus patients. Since February 26,2020 until now (October 26, 2020) more than 43 million patients and loss of almost 1.15 million deaths have been reported. The situation keeping in view declining economy, insufficient health facilities and pills, below standard hospitals is worst and is expected to get alarming by the end of the current year. Therefore, serious steps need to be taken to control Coronavirus’s spread and to save humans from a calamity.