Summer of '21

On a Sunday morning, at the peak of the second wave, I got a desperate WhatsApp message from a colleague I had never met. He is based outside India and both his parents-in-law, who lived alone in Delhi, had contracted Covid. He was desperately seeking an oxygen facility as their condition was getting critical by the minute. This was the third message since midnight. At that time, as the lead for Health Partnerships in India, I was working almost 18 hours a day, making grants for oxygen related equipment, creating campaigns on covid appropriate behaviours, coordinating with product teams and health partners, launching new initiatives almost every day to mitigate the impact of the 2nd wave and in the midst of madness, was trying to personally help as many people as I could. I was not alone…

The Second Wave of Covid was an unexpected and heart-breaking phase of the pandemic that suddenly hit all of us, and amidst the critical lack of medical equipment and other support one could not help but notice how social media proved to be an altruistic medium for people to seek and provide help – not just to their friends and families but to complete strangers as well. People decided to take it upon themselves to collate and connect resources to requirements, trying to fill the deficiencies in available infrastructure as efficiently as they could. It felt as if the whole country was united in one of the most distressing times we were all was facing. The ‘social’ in social media was emerging as a true community builder.

The general perception of human nature assumes selfishness and ego-centrism in face of tough times, however in sharp contrast to that, a crisis such as Covid 19 in itself has actually brought out a lot of goodness and beneficence to light. People who were not directly or severally affected by the virus took it upon themselves to call up hordes of hospitals and verify availability or find leads on medicines and beds or staying updated with places to find oxygen cylinders, so that they could pass on this information to anyone in need. This system worked well and helped a lot of people all around the country. Rather than one family member of the patient checking at 40 places, they could just post an inquiry and the sorted database would come to them or someone would - saving a lot of time and saving a lot of lives.

We saw the state boundaries disappearing, support groups rising up on all platforms, everyone was solely dedicated to being utilitarian, from teenagers taking upon themselves to update drive links for resources to major influencers to celebrities who invested their efforts to arrange and accommodate as many patients as they could to online community groups that set up nation or state wide volunteer networks. Just one Facebook group, Humankind Global, was able to fulfil 2 million request for help. 

We at Facebook did our small part in supporting these community groups. We set up an initiative called #CommunitiesCare with about 45 group admins who were involved in providing volunteer based peer-to-peer support. The groups collectively reached over 7 million people providing every form of support that people needed. These groups did not limit themselves to just medical requirements, but even distributed free food to people who were covid positive, providing free online medical consultation, mental health counselling support for grief and trauma, academic support for kids, fundraising and lots more. 

The 2nd wave saw millions of people struggling together, but the will of millions who turned their social media profiles into virtual help-centres, allowed us to cope with the personal struggles, pain and grief. For all the negative sentiment about social media that often dominates mainstream media, it is hard to imagine what the 2nd wave would have looked like without it. With ingenuity, courage and a little help from technology the human spirit of social cohesion prevailed.