The pandemic has plunged us into a state of high emotional density. Tanned doctors go down live because they've built up too much exhaustion and frustration. When asked about the situation in their health centers, they get excited and many cry. Under pressure, the so-called experts no longer monitor the forms as much and come to admit that they cannot anymore.
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The barrier between professional and personal is blurred. As we talk about European budgets, a baby's growl and the noise of clunkers in another room seep into a fountain. Another apologizes that she has to take the dinner out of the oven. A professor of finance misses a point because she assumes that what is coming at us is very fat. And they recognize that they don't know what's going to happen. A frankness that brings us closer.
In politics, however, little epistemological humility is seen. Ignorance, as Darwin wrote, tends to generate more confidence than knowledge. Donald Trump denied for weeks the severity of the pandemic. He assured that they had everything under control. We did not see Boris Johnson speak of overflow until the dead numbered in the hundreds and saw his own life in danger. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro is the one who encourages breaking the confinement decreed by regional leaders. It has dismissed its Health Minister after several clashes over how to handle the crisis. Or, as he says, the catarrito.
At the opposite extreme, the leader of the Portuguese opposition has become famous throughout the world for reaching out to the Government and emphasizing something basic: he is not at the service of the Socialists, but of the Government of his country. Rui Rio refuses to put on the mask of no to everything and has shown epistemological humility: he admits that he does not know if his political opponents are going to be wrong. Not like Mélenchon in France, who refuses to join the national union just in case it's a trap.
Embracing absolute positions is absurd when all governments have to make decisions with imperfect information. The locked up citizens, with accumulated fatigue, ask for lucidity and realism, not imposture. It doesn't matter if dishes and children play in the background. Nothing happens. European leaders, from whom we expect more, must recognize that, after dozens of failures, they do not know how to buy medical supplies in China without being ripped off, that they do not have a clear photo of what has happened in the nursing homes, they should have spent a lot more money on scientific research. It's never too late.
@anafuentesf
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