March 19, 2020: “We have finally received the news that we were waiting for day after day: today there have been no new cases of coronavirus in Wuhan.”
This is how the writer Fang Fang opened her diary on the 57th day of the quarantine imposed on the 9 million inhabitants of Wuhan, in China. A week before, the World Health Organization confirmed that we were facing a pandemic. The Italian Government had declared confinement throughout their country on March 9.
Such news were eagerly followed by almost everyone. In its issue of March 21, The Economist published a cover that portrayed the tragedy very well, to whose image I return frequently – the photo of the planet with an eloquent sign that said: ‘Closed!’ -.
Just two days later, on Monday, March 23, Boris Johnson announced the lockdown for the United Kingdom. Stricter measures had already been extended in several European countries: France, Germany, Spain … But the WHO did not yet recommend “broad international travel restrictions, or border closures” (The Economist, 21/3/2021).
They were quite strange weeks, in the midst of an atmosphere of uncertainties.
The coronavirus dominated the conversation at social gatherings, filled with nervous jokes about appropriate ways to greet. And with doubts about the occurrence of such meetings. Public events, such as lectures at universities, began to be canceled. Many people in England did not wait for Johnson’s announcement to lock themselves in their homes.
Get out of local confinements when the problem persists
in other parts of the world it may only be a temporary solution. That must be the first lesson of this painful experiment.
–
–
Although the event was not globally simultaneous, and there were varieties of responses, soon the containment measures covered much of the world. Bars and restaurants, theaters and stadiums, schools and airports, shops and offices: all sites that invited crowds were closed overnight to contain the spread of covid-19.
When reviewing the newspapers of those days, the bewilderment and ignorance of what was coming is remarkable. “No government, except the most repressive,” he observed. The Economist– He must believe that he can keep a country in confinement for months and months, and, even if he could, the economic effects would be intolerable ”.
That was exactly one year ago. Although there were months of respite in late summer, the new waves of quarantines have persisted for a long time and, despite the advances of the vaccine, it is still not clear when we will return to “normal”.
In addition to the suffering that has hit millions of families around the world, humanity has been subjected this year to what historian Yuval Noah Hahari called, early in the pandemic, a gigantic “social laboratory”.
It is very possible that the world will emerge stronger from this great experiment. This requires, however, seriously reflecting on what happened, in particular on the different handling of the crisis and learning from the successes and errors. But it also requires warning of the enormous challenges that the pandemic has exposed more clearly – some historical, such as those of nature, others originating from recent scientific advances, which can both favor or limit our freedoms.
As I write these lines, The Guardian registered 5,758 new cases of infections, 7,218 hospitalized and 141 deaths from coronavirus in the last 24 hours in the United Kingdom. The figures have been declining and the country is preparing to come out of confinement. But getting out of local lockdowns when the problem persists in other parts of the world may only be a temporary solution. That must be the first lesson of this painful experiment.
Eduardo Posada Carbo
– .
