José Ignacio Latorre, quantum physicist and professor at the University of Barcelona, finds it “terrible” to speak of the “fight” against the “malevolent virus” or of “the great battle that humans wage” against covid-19.
“All the vocabulary has the context of war and gives the virus an evil will.
But it is a molecule: 16 linked proteins ”, he reflects in this digital talk organized by the Hay Festival.
The researcher believes that the use of this language is "the first problem": "When one is at war, anything goes. It is worth harassing, betraying, lying, slandering, betraying ...". Latorre defends, on the other hand, that education is the “most powerful” tool to face the pandemic, but also other challenges, such as climate change: “The greatest instrument to fight a problem is education: it is not weapons, it is not laws”.
This video is part of a series organized by the Hay Festival in partnership with EL PAÍS.
Readers can watch weekly digital chats with inspiring ideas from their homes.
In addition, they can participate in the interviews of journalists from EL PAÍS with authors and thinkers such as the chronicler Alma Guillermoprieto, the linguist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar or the British economist Nicholas Stern, sending questions that will be answered one week after the publication of each talk.
