Let them all tell you what happened. Mercedes Pescador
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masks, gloves, disinfectant products, sprays. It was a time of psychosis; it seemed a nightmare. There was a page on the internet which informed us about the daily cases of infection, the daily deaths, and the total figures.
»We didn’t have a cure for this disease. They said it was like a very strong flu, damaging the lungs and stopping people from breathing. At that time there were still many people smoking cigarettes with diabetes, which was a lethal combination for those infected. Thank God, I didn’t get infected, although I belonged to the risk group. At that time, I was a bit fat and I was suffering from high blood pressure.
»They forbid us to greet with handshakes and kissing. It was very strange, I would watch movies at home were the characters were hugging and kissing each other, and I would feel a chill down my spine watching those scenes which had been shot before the pandemic but now seemed like irresponsible actions. They put in our heads the idea that every personal contact meant a risk of infection so we would avoid any signs of affection.
» We learned a lot about health and how we could protect ourselves from this type of virus. Some politicians affirmed that it would only affect rich people because they were the ones who travelled more and therefore were more exposed, how ridiculous! In one occasion, a presenter from Spanish television mocked the Mexican president for saying that the virus could be fought with the catholic saint cards. Your great-grandfather said that Spanish people came to teach religion to the Mexicans when they colonised us, so he wouldn’t accept the mockery. Other people said that the virus had emerged from an armadillo species that the Chinese ate. There were no vaccines. A Frenchman became a hero worldwide for discovering that there were two medicines for malaria which could be used to cure patients with the virus.
»The most frequented tourist destinations like Spain, Italy and France were the most financially affected. A long time passed until visits could be resumed. Many economies collapsed, we even thought that humanity was coming to an end.
»Prince Charles, the heir to the British crown, got infected with the disease. That’s why he couldn’t become king and they mocked him saying «At last you had the crown, but the coronavirus, you fool». In Mexico there were about 100.000 deaths, not that many if you take into consideration the total population, and it was because we all locked ourselves at home when it was known that the virus was so lethal.
»That was the story of the coronavirus, my dear granddaughter, a story of psychosis from which we didn’t really come out as well or unscathed as we should have done.
We’re just a speck of dust in the Universe
Bernardo Congote
Colombia
When the Voyager 2 spacecraft was planning to leave the Solar System in the nineties, Carl Sagan asked for its camera to be pointed towards us to take our photograph. And this way, we found out that we are nothing but a pale blue speck in the Universe. Now, that little blue speck is under a death threat made by a virus that scientist call COVID-19. These scientists, vilified by believers, chiromancers, preachers and haruspices, are now chased by journalists, political and social networks. To kill them? No! To find out the truth. COVID-19 is saving us from the post-truth era. From the ephemeral kingdom of Twitter and Facebook.
Scientists are teaching us to wash our hands and look after our bodies, something that thousands of gods and priests hadn’t manage to achieve.
The one who calls himself God’s representative on Earth has locked himself in a palace. He doesn’t speak. And the square were his sheep usually hover around, is now empty. If he were to come to his window to give a speech, he wouldn’t have an audience, as he had deserved for centuries. The country which they say is God’s reign, Italy, is deserted. Europe, the empress of terror for centuries, is shaking, moaning and in lockdown. It’s a positive feeling to notice how pleasantly peaceful it is now, in the middle of Trump’s silence, and also now that the Chinese dragon hardly spits the flame of a match. The overly mass-produced goods are detained at the harbours because consumers are buying less. The oceans, infested with tankers, are desolate. The airports, empty.
What are we learning from this? Our own insignificance. Our belonging to a little planet which we had destroyed with no compassion and with the hope of reaching quickly a fantasy heaven. The apocalypse has arrived already; we’ve been building it for centuries. The churches are heading towards becoming museums, we could even substitute them for schools. Teachers could now achieve the position required by humanity eager for knowledge. Schools should function twenty-four hours a day, and at the same time brothels should close down.
Our arrogance has made us think that Earth is immense because there are cars that reach 400 km/h and planes that get to 1,200 km/h. However, our planet travels the Solar System at around 40.000 km/h and the light’s wave-particles travel at 300.000 km/s. The universe we can actually manage to see is just 5% of the total, the other 95% is made out of dark matter and energy. It’s believed that the history of mankind only spans across 200,000 years, while the known Universe’s is estimated around 13m500 millions of years.
We have deified our ignorance! The search for a sole path should be understood as multi-trajectory; what we considered to be true, as untrue. It’s advisable to change the predictive ability of priests for the scientific empire of the doubt; our eagerness to live in balance, for the permanent unbalance; the search for equality, for the awareness of the unequal reality. It’s in our own interest to learn again what we thought we already knew.
To those people who thought the world was going to end, I give you the good news that it’s hardly starting thanks to a virus. It has made us aware of our small size in front of the immense universe and it has left wide-open the doors to the world of wonderland.
All this because of Carmela
Jhonny Castillo
Montevideo, Uruguay
These days I haven’t stopped thinking about a course on historical demography about the black plague which I attended a few years ago. There we took some time to analyse the prologue of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. The Italian author, who belongs to the humanistic school of thought, besides writing about the scourge that was decreasing the population in the 14th century, he talked about the cruelty of abandoning the sick to avoid infection: on the third day of showing signs of the plague —among them, stained spots on the skin—, the convalescent patient would die. These stains are the equivalent to cough and fever nowadays. The isolation and the social distancing are now being battled with the use of technology, but the vulnerability of the species is still the same.
And, talking about vulnerability, Uruguay became news to the world for not having any patients with the virus. They all blame Carmela for the disease reaching the country now. This small country ended up honouring that popular saying which reads «small country, big hell». The theme of conversations now is not the weather or crime, but the virus, and three key words: Milan, marriage and Carrasco.
It turns out that a fashion designer was in Milan and she says that when she returned to the country she requested to be tested for coronavirus at the airport. She didn’t get an effective reply from the public officials so she continued with her life as normal, in the bubble of her world of furs. A few days later, she decided to attend a wedding with over five hundred guests, and after that she found out she had coronavirus.
Carmela told her story to the newspaper El País, putting the blame on the government forces for their health inefficiency for not having done the appropriate tests. However, she has been heavily criticised, especially for her lack of common sense and caution. There was a leak of a few recordings where some of Carmela’s acquaintances accuse her of being stupid and showing a cold and absurd individualism where the “I” prevails over the “we”.
I’ve turned a bit sceptical since I arrived in Uruguay two years ago. But it’s kind of odd that the virus appeared on Friday 13. Everybody talked about Carmela more than the disease. They said: «It’s all Carmela’s fault, it’s because of her that