(CNN Spanish) - And when the majority believed they were safe, "it was then that people abandoned all precautions, too soon."
And the worst began.
The one that counts is Daniel Defoe, a seventeenth-century English writer and journalist, famous for his book "Robinson Crusoe" and also for another, bitterly topical these days: "Diary of the plague year", a novel chronicle that narrates the bubonic plague epidemic between 1665 and 1666 in London.
An entire city at the mercy of death and hoaxes, of what they spread like spit, those who knew nothing, perhaps for love of chaos or to take advantage of the situation.
More than 350 years later, that London of 460,000 inhabitants, is today our planet.
Billions of people who swing between optimism and fear, and the silly denial of misfortune.
The Spain of 1834 offers another devastating example of how disinformation is as deadly as a virus.
In a city like Madrid at the time, twitching with political strife and with a country doomed to civil war, an outbreak of cholera breaks out.
The lack of information from the authorities and that rogue need for people to find culprits, add to the malice of certain individuals who spread a rumor: the priests have ordered to poison the waters and they hire children and beggars to get it.
And the mobs began to storm convents and churches and attack any religious who dared to go out.
That hunt is known today as "the slaughter of friars".
In the rest of Europe the same thing happened but with the Jews. As usual.
Historians say that epidemics have changed the history of humanity. But to all humanity?
The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, -like Bolsonaro and like Trump until a few days ago- said again that he does not use the mouth mask, that he only puts it on where they require it, that social distance is enough because "It is not a matter that is scientifically proven" that the mask saves lives.
- MIRA: AMLO: It is not scientifically proven that the mask covers
I leave it there, because this column is being written from the most outrage, satiety and desolation.
Just a few hours ago one of my childhood best friends died: the closest thing to the idealistic, generous and stubborn brother that I didn't have; The best doctor I ever met and a guy who lived with such enthusiasm that he exhausted others.
In no time, within a few days, the coronavirus was drilling into his heart and meticulously crushing his kidneys.
And with that unspeakable evil of the microorganisms, the virus insisted on making his blood pressure plummet and then, that his lungs ignored that Tony needed fresh air.
Right now, neither his wife nor his children know what to do.
We are all disheveled and broken before the great scandal of death, as Julio Cortázar said; or great consolation, as Jorge Luis Borges preferred.
And meanwhile, Lopez Obrador saying what he says. Worst impossible.