COVID-19
May 27, 2021.
Everything went so fast. In the same way that any video in the world went viral through social networks on the internet. This was how every hour that the hands of the world clock marked that the world was dying.
Five thousand five hundred million people died in this devastating war; the first and second world wars were just a drop of water compared to this ocean of death.
I remember writing several apocalyptic novels, but in most of them it was man who caused their destruction as in "Scheduled Apocalypse", and although it was not directly man who caused the devastation, it was their lack of prevention, their lack of solidarity.
The few survivors, something like twice the population of the United States at the time of the pandemic, we were located in the Sahara desert, it was the place chosen among the likely ones so that we had a better chance of survival. In a place like this, it was more difficult to spread the virus that did not resist high temperatures.
It all started like any tragedy of colossal dimensions, unexpectedly. At the beginning of December 2019, if any note of a virus that had mutated and could be transmitted by eating exotic animals began to be heard, the first cases had appeared in the city of Wuhan in China. It reminded me of the movie 12 monkeys, a classic from the eighties where an extremist group spread a deadly virus.
From a simple note in the media this began to become a more frequent topic on social networks around the world. The newscasts took up more space to talk about the havoc it was wreaking in China, about the impressive operation to build a 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan in just days. Perhaps that was the first thing that greatly caught my attention about this evil, to think that a country invests all its effort in building a work in just ten days and that in my country it would take decades, it glimpsed a terrifying panorama if that strain crossed the continent.
Perhaps the New Year diverted attention for a few days to the serious problem, even more so when the citizens of any country realized that practically the entire world had a commercial relationship with China.
In January the news was how much alarming cases were increasing in China, then to the rest of Asia.
February was like a third world war declared to Europe; the cases began to multiply to the extent that countries like Italy began to collapse.
March was a hard blow to America, there were already cases in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Jamaica, the news no longer made a note or some notes on the Coronavirus, but practically all the newscasts were dedicated to its imminent propagation.
Until that March 11, 2020 on our continent everything seemed controlled, until then. In the afternoon I was drinking a cup of coffee sitting in my living room when a notification came from my national newspaper to which I was subscribed to my mobile phone. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, canceled all flights from Europe to his country as of Friday, March 13. At that moment my body shuddered, it was a very drastic measure, which was a very serious problem.
When I was going to call my family to tell them that news, a new notification came in that ended up freezing my skin on that strangely cool night in late winter, the NBA was canceling the basketball season at the time for testing positive for a Jazz player from Utah.
A couple of tears escaped from my eyes, it seemed impossible to live again last summer in Barcelona. Ten years passed to see Claudia again, the love of my life, and I still remember her gaze turning away from me with the promise of seeing us again in the summer of 2020, I imagined her penetrating gaze on mine spreading tears when I told her that we would not return to see us this summer, I wish it had only been that summer of 2020, I had no idea what fate would hold. I felt so depressed that I took a couple of sleeping pills and lay down on the couch in my living room.
March was eternal, every day, every hour that passed; more announcements of more drastic, unimaginable measures were published, some in totally free and democratic countries.
I do not know how I did not deduce it from the moment that as if I were a strategist at war I was seeing the countries fallen by the virus; collapsed, devastated politically, economically and morally. Maybe it was very obvious but at the time it was unthinkable to even imagine that we were being victims of a conspiracy. We never saw an enemy come asleep, silent, without a voice, until we had him oppressing us.
March 12, most major events in North America were canceled.
On March 13, China began to lower its shares to reverse the problem due to the decrease in the number of cases, but it was only a mirage that the next day would begin to explode exponentially in more unexpected cases. On March 17, by principle, all the parades and festivities of San Patricio and in any corner of the world had been suspended, but apart from that, a very strict law of care by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be implemented in every country in the world to stop what had become an uncontrollable pandemic. They were measures that contemplated a martial order that included curfews and penalties for those who did not respect the hygienic rules.
The congresses of many countries rejected many of these proposed laws and established the ones that were in their interests, other completely devastated countries like Italy complied with the measures one hundred percent.
When I was a child, in the eighties, I remember that my father took me and my sisters to see a supposedly horror movie, they were zombies that fed on people's brains, we spent the entire projection laughing at that stupidity. For millennials, the topic of zombies became cult, series, movies, videos, all apocalypses in the 2010-2020 decade had to do with zombies and it still seemed to me to laugh that people killed by a virus continued to walk and threaten the human life.
Something as fanciful and terrifying was lived that March and the subsequent ones, the chilling films of the walking dead walking through desolate streets trying to access completely fenced places for the healthy population, was what we lived. I felt helpless for not helping those people who walked slowly and barely could breathe until they fainted and were lying in some corner of the entrance of a hostel, it seemed unreal but it was so.
Anyone would think that God was angry with Europe; the scenes of the first and second world war were dramatically erased by the new images of the day to day of March 2020.
By April, the cases were exponential, a characteristic of virality, perhaps the virus was not as lethal as others, but its contagion ability was impressive, people began to become infected for the second time, thus joining the existing cases.
Horror, a billion victims! The national and international newspapers were titled in their eight column story.
June, July, each month was like a year of surprising and terrible things that happened on a daily basis. Humanity retreated to a geographical area where that particular virus could be faced.
Fortunately, if that word can be used after such devastation, cases began to dwindle with only twenty percent of the world's population still standing. The borders began to disappear, the survivors began to organize ourselves to work as a team and take care not only of that virus but of any external threat.
The civilization was able to survive although the damage was irreversible and of an unimaginable magnitude to anyone.
The fear at that time was that ending the summer again the virus would be a latent threat; it was then that we all came to this place. Here we returned to breathe, to live together, to smile, to plan the future of our species.
We did it, we were few, now we had a leader who I had no idea why he was the one who decided everything, Mexicans survived very few and coincidentally those of us who did had a characteristic that at first was thought to be the first to die.
Since I was a child I had an allergy to dust, humidity, and temperature changes, that allergy was what saved many of us because our body, as well as reacting immediately to external agents, managed to do it with the virus, expel it from our body immediately. What irony! What caused us suffering on many occasions saved our lives.
When I reviewed the data on how many survivors we were and their characteristics, I understood everything.
I was able to figure out why they ruled us, why it all started in China, why no one could catch a glimpse of it, why it was so unexpected, why so much hatred, why Europe only had a huge graveyard left, why the virus was only weak here. He answered me mentally with his gaze lost in the gigantic sand dunes and the sound of a rushing blizzard. My right eyelid was shaking I don't know if it was because of the courage or the nerves to discover it. Our leader approached me when he saw me worried, there was a leader for each region and they all had the same characteristics, ours was perhaps one of the greatest scientists in the world, a nationalist to die, he had managed to leave his country to study in Germany and become one of the most prestigious doctors on Earth, but he never stopped feeling that bitter desire for revenge. How can we not foresee it?
- Worried? - He asked analyzing me with his penetrating gaze
- No leader- my shaky and broken voice gave me away.
- You can think the worst of us. - He said when he understood what was going through my mind.
- No leader just wished that none of this had happened.
- We too would have wanted never to be slaves, never to be discriminated, never to be humiliated by the entire world, never to be the most precarious continent on the planet.
- But… - I tried to debate his argument and he wouldn't let me.
- Shhhh! Shut up son, did any country ever turn to help us? Do you have any idea how many diseases existed here? That virus was nothing compared to Ebola, AIDS, hunger, malaria, malaria, yellow fever, that was always our brothers' daily bread. Do you think we could ever have changed that? Without education? Without resources? Without anybody's support? - I couldn't believe every word that came out of his lips, my eyes filled with brightness, I don't know if for the courage to know what they had caused or for the courage not to see Claudia again, just I know that nothing was the same from that day on for me. - Sorry son we had no choice, blacks were always considered by the rest of the world to be the worst on the planet, and today we govern it.
