Essay on Covid-19

Essay on Covid-19

Solidarity and individualism in the current Covid-19 pandemic

The pandemic caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease, has been one of the events with the greatest global impact in recent decades, the consequences of which on the economy, the transport, politics and society could last beyond the disease itself.

One of them, however, is strictly social in nature: the pandemic has underlined the need for a more solidarity, more committed to mutual protection and more willing to group effort, than the liberal status quo would it is convenient to admit.

As we well know, Covid-19 is a respiratory disease that is very easy to spread from one person to another, especially in closed and poorly ventilated environments. It is estimated that a close contact (less than two meters) for 15 minutes between an infected and a healthy individual is enough for the disease to spread to this Last and, for the most part, cases of contagion can be traced to a specific and determined environment: a social gathering, a visit to a relative, a concert, etc.

Obeying, therefore, a preventive logic that admits not being able to differentiate quickly and effectively between those who are healthy and those who are have the disease in its presymptomatic stage or in its asymptomatic manifestation (the most dangerous: not for the individual in question but for those who confidently come into contact with him), the general advice given to the world population is summarized on:

• Use masks or face masks to avoid spreading the disease (and reduce the margins of contagion),
• Avoid crowds of people, especially in closed and poorly ventilated places,
• Practice social distancing, especially with vulnerable people or those who suffer from comorbidities
• Get vaccinated to reduce the risk of infection, transmission, hospitalization, and death.

These measures emphasize contact with third parties: not only because they can be a source of contagion, but because we ourselves can bring them the virus and put your life at risk. The latter, in the face of the moderate mortality margin of the disease (4.7%), which to a large extent also depends on extra-sanitary factors, is perhaps the most serious of the matter.

The disease may not be very lethal to populations whole, but it will wreak havoc among those who suffer from other diseases, are immunosuppressed or are elderly.

Although this information has been known since the beginning of the pandemic, and events as tragic as the "gerontocide" by Covid-19 in Italy during the second half of 2019 would have to be still fresh in the collective memory, everything indicates that for young and relatively healthy populations, this amounts to a declaration of immunity, that is, of impunity.

In many countries the rebellion and indifference of the young (and not so young) in the face of massive sanitary measures, such as quarantines, or simply because of the need to carry a face mask.

A deeply individualistic spirit seems to spread even among the most organized societies: until September 2021, in Spain more than 1000 clandestine parties were interrupted, in those who did not use the mask, the established limit of people in the same closed environment was not respected, or some other sanitary norm was breached, according to the sources journalistic.

And, while any government measure can be subjected to the scrutiny of legality and philosophy, it does not seem to be giving an organized debate about where the “expendable” freedoms end in a time of risk such as a pandemic. Quite the contrary: the idea of ​​“Liberty”To justify irresponsibility towards the collective, or the privilege of personal pleasures over the life of third parties.

Solidarity versus freedom

The lack of solidarity during the pandemic is not exclusive to youth, however. Nor of the anti-vaccine militants or other various pseudo-ideological flat Earthers, which proliferate in the Western societies protected by the freedom to ignore scientific information or, perhaps, the freedom to cults.

It is enough to take a look at the global distribution of vaccines to realize that governments around the world operate in an equivalent way: while 15 million doses of vaccines Americans against Covid-19 are rejected due to an overwhelming lack of demand, other nations of the world face the pandemic unable to vaccinate even 2% of their respective populations.

Thus, the hoarding of vaccines in the so-called "first world" is one more aspect of the lack of solidarity that characterizes our time. Not even the argument of the appearance of new variants in territories where the virus spreads freely - which could lead to the appearance of new and more dangerous variants that ignore the protection afforded by vaccines - seems to be enough to draw global attention to a very simple truth: global problems require solutions global.

The freedom to disobey the quarantine, so defended by Western citizens, then ends up being one more form of class privilege, insofar as the poorest countries have no alternative but to repress the population to prevent the contagion. International solidarity, even when it is translated into a greater guarantee of the future for the local population, does not seem to be a priority issue on the agenda of the great nations.

A grim conclusion

It is highly unlikely that Covid-19 will magically disappear in the next few months or years. The tools at our disposal to combat it will undoubtedly be refined, hand in hand with the technology and the innovation that characterize our age: eventually a better and more effective vaccine will be developed, or an effective treatment against the virus will be found. But as long as this does not happen, the lives of the weakest people are at risk.

The question, then, that we must ask ourselves as soon as possible is how to promote consciousness in the citizens of the West to convince them that the cooperation and mutual protection are factors that played a key role in the evolution of our species.

References:

• "Essay" in Wikipedia.
• "Covid-19" in Wikipedia.
• "Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak: Guidance for the Public" in the World Health Organization (WHO).
• "Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)" in the Pan American Health Organization.
• "New coronavirus COVID-19" in the Ministry of Health of Argentina.

What is an essay?

The test it's a literary genre, whose text is characterized by being written in prose and by addressing a specific topic freely, making use of the arguments and the author's appreciations, as well as the literary and poetic resources that make it possible to embellish the work and enhance its aesthetic features. It is considered a genre born in the European Renaissance, fruit, above all, from the pen of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and that over the centuries it has become the most used format to express ideas in a structured, didactic and formal.

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