Millions of people have been confined, but our case deserves a separate reflection. In the West, it has been the harshest confinement; in the world, we have been surpassed only by China.
Italy closed the country on March 7. If we had taken measures that same day, if we had suspended collective events, demonstrations, etc., the left of the left would have interpreted it as an attack on women. The heteropatriarchy would be using the pandemic, a passing flu in those fateful days, to justify a setback in the historical achievements of feminism. The government would be shaken and we would have had to go to elections. The media and journalists sympathetic to this interpretation ridiculed the warning calls and cheered the denialists. Christmas would be postponed rather than 8M. Their laughter still echoes in our ears today.
Lombardy fell on February 21. If we had taken measures on that day, if we had alerted the population, restricted collective events, etc., the right wing of the right wing would have interpreted it in a conspiratorial key. A social-communist government would be using the pandemic, a slight cold in those reckless days, to collectivize the country, burn churches and throw us into the arms of Venezuelan Chavism11. The media and journalists in favor of this interpretation poured venom on public opinion day in and day out. Their hoaxes are still ringing in our ears today.
The result of the collusion of both narratives, machista versus chavista, is already known. We arrived late. Undoubtedly, we could not have avoided the pandemic, but we could have better mitigated its effects. Each group imputed to the other a desire for a change of regime or a coup d'état , so we remained quiet and crowded together, like cattle before the wolf, waiting for events. In our country, any contemporary event has to be taken back to the Second Republic, the war, the post-war period, the Franco regime and the Transition, so that by the time we manage to focus, the event has jumped over our heads, and this time literally. That is why we are late.
On March 3, Spanish public television reassured us with the fact that the pandemic had caused fewer deaths in the world than the flu in Spain the previous year, 6,000 deaths (RTVE "Cinco datos para poner en su lugar la alarma social por el coronavirus"). With indescribable panic we contemplated how shortly afterwards an average of almost one thousand people died every day for two endless months, with a peak of twenty thousand deaths in just one week, the first week of April, just one month after the placebo broadcast by RTVE. Going back to our traumatic historical thread, something like this had not happened since the civil war, neither the losses, nor the propaganda. The slogan followed at the beginning of the pandemic by the communist hierarchy in Wuhan ("the bosses are not given bad news") caused an irreparable delay in decision making in the Chinese regime. Well, this maxim would also be applicable to the Spanish case.
As if that were not enough, the accumulation of nonsense, witticisms and improvisations that followed the closure of our country will be difficult to forget (e.g., "masks are not necessary because we don't have any"). However, nothing better symbolizes our surreal confinement than to observe how, while the world was literally sinking under our feet, the most valuable property in our country was a pet. Indeed, in the midst of a planetary catastrophe, we witnessed with astonishment and disbelief an animalistic moment, since the Royal Decree declaring the state of alarm and the general confinement of the population allowed pet owners to take their pets out for a walk without any time limit, in contrast to the collapse of companies, the impossibility of watching over the dead.
In the book World War Z (Max Brooks), zombies ravage the entire planet, except for Israel, which builds a high wall in time to protect itself. When asked how they could take the threat seriously, they replied that, if in a commission nine expert people are in favor of something, the tenth must imperatively contradict this opinion. In 1943, they did not believe that they were being exterminated; in 1972, that their athletes were going to be massacred; and in 1973, that they were going to be attacked by Arabs. They decided to take the threats seriously. Any threat.
Well, we have been missing a tenth man. We cannot delegate decision-making, in situations where so much is at stake, to a single leader, no matter how representative, charismatic or graceful he may be. Choosing a government cannot mean selling our soul. The composition of future expert committees, whether in bioethics or in similar areas, must have a high level of ideological and political independence, so that they can contemplate, analyze and evaluate the most extreme options, no matter how outlandish they may seem to the layman. There has been, and will be, too much at stake for everything to remain the same when this is over.
Indeed, given the risks inherent in biotechnology, synthetic biology, nanotechnology or artificial intelligence, perhaps what has happened is a lesson for the immediate future. We should bear in mind that, although we have seen this pandemic coming in slow motion, it is surprising how quickly it has paralyzed our civilization. Well, the so-called disruptive technologies can unleash similar processes, that is, global, structural and too dizzying to take action in time. We overcame this trance, but we should take it as a warning of our fragility and of the enormous destabilizing power of the technologies we are currently handling.
I hope you like this informative article, remember there is no better cure than prevention. Happy day friends
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