Life seems normal, at least for many ones. Even at home, I confess, several times I have to warn them to disinfect the footwear before entering, although it is a totally visible zinc trunk. I feel for human behaviors and there are coincidences: practically everyone wears the facemask (some badly placed), but social distancing is very relative, so much so that if we were to add a new style of thought to this century with coined irony, it would be fine "in crowds,” I say.
I am far from wanting to start smiles on a matter as serious as the daily analysis of COVID-19 in Cuba, and especially in the province, where although it is recognized there is a control of the virus, the figures for April exceed those of the last year, without being chilling like those of other territories of the country and outside borders.
Local authorities warn of the high probability of contagion and its increase, but the perception of risk and responsibility, little changes. Walking through common places, especially markets and shops, you can see people do not think or conceive that any space, even the house, is a red zone.
In a well-argued article by my colleague István Ojeda, the complex and harsh epidemiological situation of the territory, above all its capital, is exposed. The words of Dr. Aldo Cortés González, deputy director of the Provincial Center for Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology, to the journalist Misleydis González were clear and precise: “If we continue at this rate we will have more than 80 and 90 cases in a week; it will be up to the people to change forecasts."
Absolute truth. One becomes aware of that reality when the yellow taxi arrives with specialized personnel, to carry out the PCR. There, the heart clenches, the neighbors look around, put their hands on their heads, tears fall, and the storm brings lightning and thunder. Then the sufferings, regrets, and fears are worse. The consequences are unpredictable. But at everyone's risk that is never thought about. I have that certainty when I see the drawn-horse carriages passing by the avenue as full as ever.
When asking about the queues of the Leningrado shopping complex, in my neighborhood, and my husband tells me that there is “a crowd in down the tree next to the kiosk before crossing the street, and another organized under the one that is almost in front of the stairs of the shopping mall ... and there, in front of the Tony Alomá school, I lost count.” When I see the human lines glued to each other in banking, shopping, groceries, pharmacies ... I have no doubt. The reality is beyond me.
In short, the same indiscipline that we usually commit as if they were the sanest thing in the world and are so ingrained, apparently, that not even a cruel and deadly pandemic as the COVID-19 stops them. It seems fashionable to say that if you don't queue, you don't eat. The waits, the shifts and the queues I have always seen, it is not news of these times. The problem is not in the lines or the number of the food card. It is the way we do them and the fatal consequences they can generate now.
I, clinging to the fact that we can do it well, ask myself the same thing again: What concept of love can these people have who consciously crowd together, ignoring all epidemiological warnings? Where do education and culture lose their convergence? Are we so naive or so handsome that we think we are "untouchable" by the disease? How many people are infected and we know they are responsible, are properly protected, and use the hand gel even with passionate mania?
And I speak of love because it is the essence.
When Dr. Durán says the numbers of infected nursing-babies, children and adolescents I bristle sadly. Children at an early age are the reflection and net product of their parents. Is it upright, protective, and concerned love that exposes them when leaving home, many times for activities that are not vital and can wait? Should I conceive of true paternity in those who let them play in the streets and hang around late into the night -or at any time-, as if they did not know the existence of a deadly and invisible pandemic?
Do not gamble with your health and your life. When you do it, you also do it with mine; and believe me, I do not authorize you under any circumstances. Other people's lives are respected, with and without the same last name. SARS-CoV-2 kills and we can die if we play with fire. Please do not play.
