To emphasise the reality and deadliness of COVID-19, I will waive my anonymity in this publication. I am going to be very serious with Ghanaians, especially, those in Ghana and those reading this publication, about how dangerous COVID-19 and its new variants are hence the warning to them not to joke with it.

Until the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and its new more contagious variants have hit you or your family or friends, you will not appreciate its fatality. You will assume it does not exist, or it is not as deadly as it is said to be but it is.

Recently, I had to self-isolate from a particular place for ten days because I was instructed to owing to my colleague in the same area contracting the virus or disease. Many of those who frequent the area have contracted the virus and themselves and those they had been in contact with traced and ordered to self-isolate.

Three days into my self-isolation, I went for COVID-19 PCR swab test and the result came out negative. However, I was still banned from the area until after the completion of my 10-day self-isolation. I lost money for not being allowed to the area. For privacy requirements and other obligations, I will not disclose the venue.

What is sad and painful is for your son or daughter living alone at about 20 miles away from you to contract Covid-19 but for your age and underlying health problems as a parent, you could not visit him or her? If you do go, you risk getting infected and your chance of survival is minimal. I don’t wish any parent to go through that.

When it happened to me, it took one of my younger children, a nurse, also living apart, to risk her life to move in to look after her senior sibling. This is because of her age and how she could take better precautions, being a frontline health worker.

A friend of mine, a white man, has had his mum and uncle living separately in different towns in the United Kingdom killed by Covid-19 on the same day. This is barely two weeks ago.

A family friend whose son contracted the disease was so hurt and felt like neglecting his parental duties to his son if he refused to check on his son in his self-isolation room in the same house.

He risked his life to check on the son despite his age. In less than three days, he also became infected. However, as at writing, both of them well and out of the infection.

One of my friends that I count among the first three that have appreciated my kind gestures to them in my entire life in spite of the multitude of people that I have helped both in Ghana and abroad, got seriously infected with COVID-19. I had not seen him for about last six years.

When I phoned him about two weeks ago, he told me how he had contracted the virus and at a point was trying to get hold of a bleach, poison or whatever, to drink and die but he could not get out of bed to reach any.

When he was talking to me, even after claiming to be very well, the way he was coughing badly and continuously, could not talk properly, suggested to me how seriously the virus has savaged him. I felt sorry for him and could imagine the hell he had gone through.

Food was being dropped outside his door for him but he could not lay hands on many. He lives alone.

Finally, but not least, as I write, my own cousin has passed away exactly four days ago with COVID-19 infection here in London. The most painful aspect of it all is when you die amid all the COVID-19 restrictions protocols in place, you can’t be accorded any decent burial contrary to the requirements of our Ghanaian culture to paying last respects to the dead.

As I write, I am in pain of losing my cousin. In Ghana, he was my father’s nephew but in the Whiteman’s land they say cousin.

I would not have made these revelations were it not how Ghanaians back home are nonchalantly approaching or taking COVID-19.

There is no more stigma about COVID-19 infection since the way things are going with its higher rate of infection, many people, if not almost everyone, may at some point get infected.

COVID-19 kills so please don’t play with it. It is no respecter of persons. It infects or kills the rich, the poor, the needy, the highly educated and the non-educated. All it takes is for us to stay safe by respecting the government advisory or medical protocols.

Please, if you sense to have been infected, tell a friend or family member. They may suggest to you what to do, eat or drink. If you do, you may be able to save your life than to keep it secret and then die.

Treating yourself with neem tree concoction by way of drinking or sweating out using its steam, some home-made herbal African drinks (combination of boiled ginger, pineapple skin and leaves, lemon, garlic, hibiscus flower, etc.), will help prevent you from, or cure you of, COVID-19 infection.