December Déjà Vu

December, a month of family gatherings, Christmas celebrations, farewells and new wishes for the near future, which returns with high concerns as a result of Covid-19 and the new variants that leaves a trail behind due to the mutations it spawns. Delta broke havoc worldwide, but now Omicron is on stage.

It was around this date, but in 2019, when headlines of an unknown and distant respiratory virus that attacked China began to cross the Internet. Despite so many discriminations and accusations that it was the main responsible and inventor of SARS-CoV-2 without real evidence, the truth is that, like that Asian giant, few have managed to fend Covid-19.

This new coronavirus is the result of a life cycle altered and broken by man himself. It’s the consequence of a disinterested and irresponsible attitude towards nature and the concept of life in all its fields. Nature in function of man, and not vice versa, protecting it and living in resilience that planet Earth needs so much for its survival.

The everyday life, of school or work to home, between household chores and trite routines, exhausting due to their monotonous nature, has experienced, like matter, a changing process. There’s a  before and after that separates us with or without Covid-19, with and without grandparents, parents, months without face-to-face classes and contact between work colleagues.

The fact of wearing a mask many years ago was something strange, ridiculous, self-centered or hypochondriacally. In Havana, slanted eyes appeared, they were isolated faces like that, but here, it was somewhat contradictory, starting from a colorful panorama and blue sky, free of environmental pollution. However, today, it’s like a badge of protection.

The face mask fashion handmade by grandmothers, others made industrially and disposables, with animated characters, laces, and varied colors spread and we began to see ourselves like serial dolls, all with covered mouths and noses, leaving interpretation for the person next to you, expressions, feelings and words hidden under pieces of cloth, and with the melody of the eyes.

However, like "fashion" at last, everything is changing. It changes that many are no longer interested in wearing the mask, they don’t care if they get sick and infect a relative, they are no longer interested in Covid-19 or the new variants that are more transmissible. They don’t care about the present because they are tired of the routine, as if it were the same like sleeping night after night.

But sadly, many behaviors and demands fall at the wrong time. It’s like in the middle of a war, a soldier gets tired by extreme exhaustion, hunger, psychological stress, loneliness and fear, and lets a new rain of bombs fall on him unprepared in the middle of the night, without having his weapon at the ready, without be on the defense.

Between discouragement and acute ignorance, a long and international see-saw is rocked in social networks, the most unusual to be seen in this century and at this point in the pandemic. The illiteracy of many to ignore the disease, the millions of infected, its symptoms, damages, the thousands of deaths, to dishonor the sorrow for those who are no longer around and those who mourn them.

More than that, there are also those who deny Delta or Ómicron and affirm that this is nothing more than a maneuver of their governments to deprive them of their human rights, of their freedom. Falling not far behind are those who oppose vaccines, flatly refuse immunization, don’t believe in the value of science, and don’t value the hard work of medical and scientific staff.

It’s a pandemic of human selfishness, which verbally and physically attacks the doctors who are on duty and the nurses who carry out the immunization, an awareness among the evils that generates disorder to the point of falling into protests, mass, and violent demonstrations against measures that more than restrictive, ensure the health of societies and economies.

And amid so much selfishness, the greed of the most developed, the materialism of the capitalists has trampled, as it has never ceased to be, the poor peoples, the most disadvantaged children. They go through the world tracing their path, they don’t look to the side or backwards, they don’t extend their hand, they hate solidarity, being good people, good nations.

In Europe it happens that in many countries there are plenty of vaccines because their inhabitants are no longer interested in getting vaccinated. It happens that its residents, some Latino emigrants, don’t see the problem of the shortage of vaccines in their native towns, and become part of that great mass that doesn’t allow the most affected to improve, even those who live on the land that saw them born.

This pandemic is one of those key moments that brings out the best or worst in people in atypical and difficult conditions. Only the effect is reciprocal by the nature of that great infinite cycle of life. AMLO, as the current president of Mexico shortly, said it a matter of weeks ago, Omicron is a consequence of international inequality.

As the world community itself left behind the African peoples, the most sabotaged, enslaved and cornered throughout history, even tougher in this pandemic that not even the richest and most developed can endure, the virus thrived among beings without health care, malnourished, without even a dose of anticovid-19, and for this reason even Omicron mutated.

And then December came again, when it should be a month for celebrations and joys, the sixth outbreak in Europe is the latest news, the records of infections, the partial and total closures in places where hospitalizations have risen and there’s almost no capacity for new admittances. Christmas festivities and dinners canceled and visits postponed, how will this story end?

It will stop when the population becomes aware of the need to be vaccinated, the fact that Germany and Belgium, for example, are in bouncing back because vaccines arrived there, but millions did not have access to them. That percent of the unvaccinated is today the main contagion agent of Covid-19, which causes those already vaccinated to fall ill, even with mild symptoms.

It will stop when the nations respect Africa and America as worthy peoples and in equal condition as others, and not as the backyard of the luxurious mansion. It will stop when solidarity and humanism prevail. It will stop when the peoples fight each other, when the authors of this novel based on real events, support each other.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff