Old scared dead

Between these four walls, I think. Thinking is a lonely vice. I think about what would have happened if this pandemic was feeding on children. I think about how parents or grandmothers would have demanded urgent measures from a first dead child. And in the columns that we would have written about the loss of the most precious. I think if the alarming bug that keeps us these days at home had installed itself in the bodies of young people. How many rules we would have obeyed for fear of losing them; how they would have shut themselves up home scared to death. If the old people had been mere transmitters but not potential victims, we would have kept them at a distance so that they would not infect our youth, so that they would not approach us children in the parks. We ourselves would have canceled their trips to the Imserso, and when some grandfather got out of control, we would curse him, since they are close to death, nothing matters to them!

But the capricious composition of the virus has wanted the elderly or those who already suffer from a disease to be chosen so that the infection punishes them more viciously. It was shocking to see how for days the population felt liberated or blessed by the mere fact of not having traveled to Italy, having no cardiovascular problems or not being old. When they reported in the media about a new dead person, they immediately reported their age and their previous pathologies, so that the rest of us could breathe a sigh of relief. Even being infected was not too alarming if we had not crossed the 60s barrier and had our immune systems in shape. We did not mind scaring the old to get a reassuring message for those of us who are not yet. How many times, after hearing that the deceased was 90 years old, the petty thought that this woman has already lived a full life has crossed our minds. In what way, I wonder, has the laxity of our precautions, or the slowness with which the alarm has been imposed, been influenced by the fact that we believed ourselves immune, still immortal, strong, capable of defeating this virus that we have used? taken little seriously until now. And to what extent the Government should have exerted itself in pedagogy, both in the behavior of its members, and in demanding that citizens accept social distance as the only way to save lives. Until yesterday it was difficult to tell some people greeting you to refrain from kissing or shaking hands. If the Ministry of Health had warned that it is difficult for citizens to assume standards if they do not feel concerned, the president could have approached the nation closely, but forcefully, so that we would find out. It has been the public health workers who have firmly taken the reins of this campaign. Life is going on it. And they have urged us to assume that we couldn't touch each other, that we shouldn't travel, that we shouldn't transport the virus from one place to another.

The fear of death is always there, until the last breath, so I cannot imagine why it is being so stark in the information on the casualties caused by the virus. One more old man. One more grandmother. And we are so stupid that we feel safe from old age: in the future there is nothing closer. We are so free of ourselves, we are so foolish, that we encourage our children to leave Madrid and return to the town, in the warmth of home, regardless of the grandparents, who have the right to live their last days free from dying in a saturated hospital. Or we are so smart that we go to the beach.

There are times in life when we need a parent to explain how to behave. And there are historical moments when that role must be played by the president of the nation.

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