Sadness in the Macondo .- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
x Aram Aharonian: It can happen as it happens in the story of Peter and the Wolf and that, as much as it is said that a variant is more dangerous, when it really arrives nobody will believe it.
In these times of covid-19, where uncertainty seems to be the only certainty and the future had come to be called a “new normal” without it being very clear what that will mean, a new variant of the coronavirus appeared, baptized as Omicron and detected in South Africa, which turned on all the alarm lights in the world, shook the stock markets and collapsed the prices of industrial raw materials.
Quarantines and social distancing have been presented for more than a year and a half as the best weapon to face the virus. And so depression and loneliness, already at very worrying levels, have skyrocketed just as quickly as the virus.
During the first wave of the pandemic, the activation of the “all together” happened to get out of the plague; later, when it seemed that it had been overcome, the second wave arrived and the psychological impact was important, due to the feeling that everything that had been done had been of no use. Undoubtedly, the cumulative effect after more than a year and a half is a danger, since disorders have skyrocketed in people who did not suffer from them and obsessive disorders have worsened.
And in this evolution, the economic factor is "key", because unemployment increased, social security fell, the closure of businesses left entire families without income, hunger lines and solidarity popular pots are growing. Psychologists say that they are repercussions that are beginning to be seen now, that they do not appear immediately.
The pandemic did not end and we are already entering the fourth variant. We are aware that it will continue until all countries agree to mass vaccination, which is prevented by the large transnational pharmaceutical companies that only think in the capitalist logic of profit. Now a new strain has emerged that puts the progress made so far in the world at risk.
It also warns us of the risk of playing with fear with each variant. The consequence is that it can happen as it happens in the story of Peter and the Wolf and that, as much as it is said that a variant is more dangerous, when it really arrives no one believes it.
The new variant is the effect of the stockpiling of vaccines from rich countries and threatens the West at the end of the year. Very little data is still known and it will take several weeks to analyze them and reach conclusions. But what the hegemonic media worry about is only the stock market falls and oil prices. Is life worth nothing, dear Pablo Milanés?
While the Delta variant monopolizes the international landscape of infections, a new variant, called Omicron (B.1.1529), raises the alarms of the scientific community. First reported on November 11 in Botswana, it has already been identified in South Africa and in countries on other continents such as Hong Kong, Israel and Belgium. It has more than 30 mutations in its Spike (S) protein and is spreading rapidly in Africa. According to the WHO, it is a variant of concern
Macondo II
My silence is just another word for my pain.......
Thousands of people around the world have discovered during the coronavirus crisis that the plague of oblivion that punished Macondo, the fictional town of Gabriel García Márquez, is also the present account of their lives.
Álvaro Santana pointed out in The New York Times that in these times, when it seems that we live in a global Macondo, many go to One Hundred Years of Solitude as if it were a book of prophecies to understand the world in which we live and especially in which we will live after the pandemic. Rodrigo García, son of the writer, told in a letter to his father that not a single day goes by without coming across a reference to the plague of insomnia or some of its variants.
Physical confinement is also an emotional quarantine for millions. A double confinement that has thrown many of us into that loneliness that afflicted the inhabitants of Macondo. But even in the most fatal moments of the plague, the inhabitants of Macondo were not left alone. They met. Stories were told. They kept company. They helped their community. But no one died in the Macondo plague.
As old as the plagues are its social effects. The fear, the fear that borders on and disguises itself as panic, the misinformation about what is really happening - a task of the transnationals of media terror-, the discrimination towards the sick and those who care for them, the incompetence of the authorities to contain the disease , the various conspiracy theories about the origin and nature of the pandemic ...
But the only certainty is that collective uncertainty grows with the passing days, along with the sharp increase in poverty and hunger here and there as well.
Experts warned as early as 2020 about the cumulative nature of the psychological effects of the pandemic. Also on how mental health and mood influence the immune system and its responses. There is no doubt about the relationship between social isolation and impoverishment of mental health
Time magazine wondered if Covid-19 was making the loneliness epidemic already affecting the United States even worse. Before the pandemic, 60% of Americans said they experienced some degree of loneliness: its health consequences have been assimilated to the effect of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
In a pandemic, a study by Social Pro determined that a third of Americans, in all age groups, felt more alone than before the arrival of the coronavirus. Among the most affected was the segment aged 24 to 39: 34% said they suffered from this sensation always or frequently, while 47% did it sometimes.
Ministry of Solitude
The isolation and its exacerbation by Covid-19 have several countries on alert, including the United Kingdom and Japan, which have launched two government agencies to address what they predict will be the next pandemic to face in the world: loneliness. It is that in full confinement to avoid contagion of Covid-19, the suicide rate increased, mainly in single women.
For older adults, being considered a risk group during the pandemic had a great impact: they had to adapt their routines, limit their contacts, leave jobs and occupations and, in many cases, submit to isolation.
The Ministry of Solitude is not a Japanese invention: the United Kingdom already created this portfolio in 2018, under the government of Theresa May. It was a way of recognizing that people's social isolation was becoming a serious public health problem.
It was in February 2021 that Japan created its first Ministry for Loneliness, with the task of responding urgently to a situation that, according to its data, caused 21 thousand people to kill themselves in 2020. Japan is spearheading of various social processes, such as the unease caused by capitalism (accentuated by the current pandemic) and that the work of the painter Tetsuya Ishida described in all its harshness.
Ishida was born in June 1973 and died at age 32, in 2005, in a train accident that was possibly suicide. For a decade, the young artist painted what he considered scenes from everyday life: a Japan trapped in the desolation of modern life and the demands of savage capitalism.
These times of pandemic invite us to overcome the humanism built on the dehumanization of the majority and the exploitation of nature. The world will be different after the pandemic. Will another cultural colonization begin? The states, after the parate, will lack resources and will have to decide between paying debts or feeding their citizens. The present - and especially the near future - will be one of massive unemployment and hunger, of depression and loneliness.
Today despair, fear, loneliness have also moved to the murals of América Lapobre, where the feelings of our peoples are described in colors. CLAE
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