Last Sunday it was a year since the coronavirus arrived in Spain. It was on January 31, late at night, when the National Center for Microbiology confirmed the first case, that of a German tourist on the Canary Island of La Gomera.
Only a month and a half after that, the declaration of the state of alarm and the strict house confinement would arrive. The first wave was, without a doubt, that of fear and the deep feeling of unreality before what we were experiencing. A kind of apocalyptic science fiction with a virus from Wuhan as the protagonist.
I remember what the media did then. Whenever there was talk of a new death from covid, their advanced age and previous pathologies were automatically reported, always and everywhere, so that everyone else could breathe a sigh of relief. It didn’t matter too much about scaring the older people, because more important was that everyone else not panic.
The mean and reassuring message that we all expected in each news story was simply that, that only the old and the sick died, so well, it wasn’t that serious.
However, today, 60,000 deaths later, the media do just the opposite, searching tirelessly to find the news of that young man who spent two months in the ICU, or that of the twenty-something who could not overcome the disease. And those health authorities who used to tell us about the elderly and the sick, are now striving to warn that “critical covid patients are getting younger and younger.” It is the desperate search for that slap of reality that makes us wake up, that in some way clears the fatigue, the infinite exhaustion that this third wave has inevitably brought us.
There were 584 deaths from coronavirus on Friday. 584 deaths, are they many or few?
The third wave is undoubtedly that of pandemic fatigue, complaining, and boredom. We are no longer impressed by data, whatever it is. Do we already live anesthetized against the covid?
From a psychological point of view, it is logical that when an ‘exceptional’ situation, such as a pandemic, extends long over time, we end up normalizing it. We normalize for sheer survival, as a defense mechanism.
A few days ago the United Kingdom reached 100,000 deaths from coronavirus since all this began, that is why its prime minister, Boris Johnson, appeared before journalists taking responsibility for each decision: “I deeply regret every life that has been lost and, of course, as Prime Minister I take full responsibility for everything this government has done. ‘
That same day, already in our country, Pedro Sánchez also appeared from the Moncloa Palace, without questions. A closed speech in which, of course, he did not talk about the delicate health situation, or epidemiological indicators, deaths or the healthcare pressure of our hospitals. Moreover, continuing with the usual political comedy, he spoke of the health emergency in the past, as if it were something that has already been overcome: «during 2020 we were at the forefront of the health emergency, now in 2021 we are at the forefront of the strategy of vaccination and also economic and social recovery, in short, overcoming this pandemic. And he said it like that, without a red face, without disheveled or anything.
That is why the general fed-up, disinterest, and the apparent social indifference that begins to cover everything, is not due only to pandemic fatigue.
It is the ‘jetism’ of our politicians, of all of them, of their constant traveling circus, the application or not of measures depending on the partisan convenience of some and others, the political tension, the farce of elections in Catalonia, with PPE included, and that cynicism that pervades everything, which really blurs the reality of ICUs, the suffering of family members, and the despair of all healthcare personnel.
Sofía Morán de Paz (@ SofiaMP80) has a degree in Psychology and a mother in distress
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