They removed the obligation to wear face masks in closed spaces, at least in the law, because in practical terms many of us had already dispensed with such a thing. The first year of the pandemic I did not leave the house or see anyone, not even my mother. We met again after eight months and it is as if she were another person; she must have felt the same way about me. Then 2021 came and the lack of control came, I went out and partyed like never before, and already at the beginning of this year, bye, mask. I mean, what was the point of putting it on at the door of the restaurant and taking it off when you sat down at the table? I haven’t used one anywhere in months, so the official announcement didn’t change much.
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Yet we still see people wearing it, and we will continue to do so until they feel inadequate and outdated themselves. It is as if they are wearing a blanket that gives them the feeling of security, but by now we should know that nothing in this life can make us feel safe. Even if some resist, the golden age for mask manufacturers has come to an end, at least until the next pandemic; which will come sooner than we think, according to Bill Gates. And yes, wearing a mask served not only to keep covid at bay, but also to reduce the rates of respiratory diseases, but, unless the air on the planet becomes unbreathable, wearing a mask as if we were still on alert is illogical.
Masks and vaccines aside, the virus may be gone, but it took a part of our lives and almost no one can say that it is the same as it was before the pandemic. I don’t know how to put it, but we were left hurt, like incomplete. We will be those of other times, but it will take us a while. While that normality arrives, we walk around as if things were as before. They are not, not yet.
The virus emerged in China while the world was partying, and now that the party is back, China again looks as if this is going to end.
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The coronavirus affected everything, not only the economy, but it also gave us less and worse hours of sleep, triggered violence against women and children, affected people’s mental health and, most importantly, took people away. Estimated deaths range between six and fifteen million, and although the margin is too wide, in the long run there are few deaths.
What I want to say is that each death is a family tragedy and an irreparable loss, but on a planet of eight billion inhabitants, covid was just a scratch and not the tragedy that was seen coming at some point. That story that we were going to come out better would have been true if our entire civilization had been threatened, but such a thing did not happen. More than an attack on the entire species, this felt like a system tweak. According to experts, between 2011 and 2018 almost fifteen hundred epidemic outbreaks arose in the world, so one had to burst; pure statistics.
Although that the virus is gone depends on who tells the story. While the world is practically open, China is experiencing scenes typical of a dystopian film, all narrated between information and myth: food shortages, suspension of public transport, parents separated from their children, people forcibly locked up from the balconies of her apartments asking to be let out, employees forced to sleep at their workplace, closing of commercial premises with customers inside, drones and robots that supervise that the inhabitants comply with the rules.
Although official reports indicate a rise in the number of covid cases, people seem to fear their government more than the disease itself. The virus emerged in China while the world was partying, and now that the party is back, China again looks as if this is going to end. Those people know something they didn’t want to tell us.
ADOLFO ZABLEH DURAN
(Read all the columns of Adolfo Zableh Durán in EL TIEMPO, here)
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