When I finish pronouncing future the first syllable is already in the past ”, wrote Wislawa Szymborska. The phrase refers to the passage of time, but also describes the fragility of our projects: of our life.
We discussed social constructs and biology broke in to endanger our health, alter our customs, and devastate our production system. We debated pronouns; now we are concerned with dying or, as Branko Milanovic writes, killing the people we would die to keep alive. The crisis requires unity, discipline, determination and trust in experts and institutions. And luck. Many leaders do their best in difficult circumstances, but others remain sectarian frivolity. If epidemics are an equalizing factor, we see how there are many politicians with the disease, which indicates above all that they are being tested more. If citizens are asked to be rigorous about quarantine, Vice President Iglesias happily skips it. If there is a spontaneous demonstration on the balconies to recognize the effort of the health personnel, their training tries to appropriate it. They speak of the people, but only understand it as an instrument at the service of the party. They preach unity, but it is only a tool for exclusion. It is a disgrace: the first thing is to save lives; the second is to avoid social collapse. Their actions do not help either way.
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When the emergency passes, errors in management, communication and the public sphere will have to be evaluated. An argument is heard: we underestimate it, but how could we know? It seems a confession: it is to drain the bundle. In its favor, we have seen how other countries - not all - repeat errors and delay measures for pure convenience. Against him, we have the evidence. What was known to happen was in the international press, in warnings from international organizations and in the Spanish media, including this one. Surely, the analysis from a management point of view is different. From the point of view of journalism, it shows that the noise that we generate deafens us and that the positioning is imposed on the analysis or at least on the doubt, which is the starting point to understand something. We talk a lot about Orwell, but we don't remember a central phrase often enough: "Seeing what's under your nose requires constant struggle." @gascondaniel
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