This year we will celebrate Christmas with the joy of rediscovering most of the consumption and family rituals that the pandemic castrated us in 2020, but with the bitter aftertaste of facing a new wave of restrictions and the possibility that the new Omicron bug travels even more freely around the country after kissing the brother-in-law and hugging the children. The economy is a reflection of our mental state and, as journalist Ben Casselman recently explained in The New York Times' magnificent podcast The Daily, most American analysts and those from the rest of the world face the present with the same question: "The economy is doing well. Why do we feel so terribly?". This apparent dichotomy is reasonable; while the market recovers from the waiting period of this past year, the lack of some materials and the slowdown in mercantile transport have awakened the ghost of an escalation of inflation and an immediate future with scarcity of basic resources.
It is no coincidence that, during that time, popular culture has resurrected the Apocalypse of an economic catastrophe; this can be seen in magnificent television series such as L'Effondrement (The Collapse), a new dystopia created by the production company Les Parasites in which a series of first-world citizens face a kind of Third World War caused by the lack of food and fuel. Evidently, literary futures are metaphorical exaggerations and we have not yet reached a situation remotely similar to that of some of the protagonists of this series, a wealthy class that buys citizenship on an island where resources still exist, protected by drones that castrate any attempt at invasion. But it must also be said that the television narrative of the recent past (Dead Zone or My Secret Terrius) had predicted viral contagion as one of the great sources of problems and conflicts of the future and it seemed just as delusional to us.
The latest imposition of restrictions promoted by the Generalitat and the Government (with some measures, such as the curfew, absolutely unjustified in scientific terms and which must be criticized, it would be all that was missing) have increased a feeling of anti-politics against the administration that I find highly worrying. We must amend power when it arbitrarily restricts our freedom, but we must also be aware that under many anarchic spirits disguised as liberalism, political forces of an almost-totalitarian root are hidden. Perhaps we do not have the best-prepared generation of leaders to manage the enormous complexity of tomorrow's world, but the post-Covid planet will not improve based on populism or a more protectionist economy. If most epidemiologists and members of the scientific community agree on one point, it is that Covid will end more the more global and coordinated the response against the virus is.
Perhaps we do not have the best-prepared generation of leaders to manage the enormous complexity of tomorrow's world, but the post-Covid planet will not improve based on populism or a more protectionist economyToday, while the escudellaat home, everyone will take the opportunity to act as an amateur epidemiologist (there will even be a family member who is totally sure of knowing how to eradicate Covid with much more sagacity than most health ministers in the world) and some of the diners will take advantage of the extra dose of cava to curse the sacrifices that governments enact to combat the damned pandemic.As pissed off as we may be, I beg you, do not fall into the trap of "cuñadismo" nor into the heat of conspiracy theories.If recent history should serve us for anything, it is to measure words like "sacrifice" or "freedom." Generations like mine, who were born and grew up in democracy, have lived with infinitely greater comfort and a state of public welfare than that of our parents and grandparents.If you have fatalistic temptations, talk to the oldest members of the family; they have lived through hardships and sacrifices that our silk skin cannot even imagine.
In the same way that it has overcome wars and fierce systemic crises, humanity will take advantage of this historical present to become stronger. It is not a question of being optimistic, which I am, but of verifying how, faced with the appearance of an unknown virus, our world has found several vaccines to mitigate it in record time and most administrations on the planet, with all the caveats one may add, have been able to protect a very high percentage of their population. We have all suffered discomfort, it is evident, but if we compare them in a historical context and evaluate these last two years with perspective, ours is not a time to cry; on the contrary, it is a convulsive and difficult moment, but also an exciting one. No matter how many variants this little bug that has changed our lives may have, we can be sure that our scientists and managers will devise ways to eradicate it. The world is going to change, it is evident, but we are still far from collapse and we have a lot of room to improve collective life.
With this small claim of hope, your Saturday stabber wishes you a Happy Pandemic Holiday. We will read each other very soon, in 2022!
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