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A nursing staff member looks after a corona patient wearing protective equipment (Essen, October 2020)
Photo:
Fabian Strauch / picture alliance / dpa
The week was again dominated by attention syndrome, the election in the USA, the global corona situation, the murders in France and Vienna.
In the attention-driven time there is little room for rest or reflection.
Who can still afford to think in a time when many only have the strength to act?
In months that leave many freaking out with fear and overwhelm.
Or in which they are simply tired.
Sibylle Berg arrow to the right
Photo:
Joseph Shrub
Sibylle Berg is a writer and playwright.
In 2019 her bestselling novel "GRM. Brainfuck" was published, and in 2020 the discussion volume "Nerds save the world".
Berg has received numerous awards for her literary work, most recently the "Bertolt Brecht Prize" and the "Swiss Grand Prix for Literature".
Together with Matze Hielscher she can be heard every 14 days in the podcast "Wesensfremd".
The people who work in hospitals and in nursing, for example.
You know, the people you forget as long as you don't need them.
Those who are expected to make no mistakes, give courage and strength, be friendly, function and shut up.
In Switzerland - you know, Switzerland, one of the richest countries in the world - the President of the Humbel Health Commission was indignant about striking nurses.
"The nursing staff, on the other hand, has a secure job. And their earnings are not that miserable."
In Germany the shifts of carers have been extended.
Well, it will be fine.
Somehow they will make it through the winter, because they have rough times ahead of them again.
The intensive care beds are becoming scarcer, in Switzerland they still last five days before the magic word triage is used again.
What can politicians also do if the privatization of hospitals soon becomes standard?
What can you do if, as a representative of the people, you do not have the courage to oppose the system that is considered to be without alternative?
For those who have inherited capital at their disposal, the system is wonderful.
Private hospitals, the chief physician, attentive care, and men at risk groups like Donald Trump are fit again on the stage.
For the majority of the populations, who are 90 percent, simply be lucky.
Or: it is your own fault to fail in this system with no alternative, which has made most of them overtired and anxious.
Merciless and just struggling to survive.
Even in the increasing corona crisis, only those whose human capital is of value on the labor market will survive.
Or who is rich.
The term triage, i.e. selection, which actually describes the failure of health systems, is reinterpreted as a historical fact.
A high of privatization, long live our democracy, in which democratically elected representatives decide indirectly about life and death.
I have the bad feeling that after Corona is before Corona.
The crises will increase due to the climate.
Or a few bankers gamble away again.
Or the next virus celebrates globalization.
A few will win, will feel invincible, will not know what nurses are doing, or people who have been in need of handouts for almost a year now.
Who beg for the money that is actually theirs.
If everyone is now looking to America, to the country that, like few others, shows where unregulated capitalism is leading, then it must be clear that this is the path that Europe is also taking.
In times of crisis it becomes clear what human lives are worth, what appreciation they experience, which societies carry in crises.
They are, a little tip, not CEOs and slaughterhouse owners.
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