The plan today was to talk about the supermassive black holes at the heart of each galaxy and how they act as conductors and control the production of stars in their surroundings. But how about the 500,000 death mark?
When we hit 100,000, I wrote about shared responsibility, our failure to properly communicate science, and initiate responsible collective response. Less than a year and 400,000 deaths later, nothing has changed. It is hopeless.
Just stick with anecdotal examples from my immediate surroundings – stories that have accumulated over a period of ten days, something like that. I suspect this is the average of the situation we are all involved in.
A relative would find a new job and, of course, earn less than the old one. Nobody wears a mask there. The person she casually trains tells her that her boyfriend is with Covid, but she doesn’t take it. Three days later, 7 people from the company tested positive in a serological test. The relative tests negative. Call a friend to visit last Friday. The next day he has symptoms. “It must have been the cold.” Positive antigen test on Sunday. Her daughter, who lives with her, also took it with her. The prognosis for both is good. Unfortunately, the virus transmission chain remains intact. It won’t take long to meet someone who joins the 500,000 line. But calm down, it’s going to get worse.
When the company is notified, the bosses will send her a “Covid kit” and a “prescription”, distributed via Whatsapp. There are eight drugs in total: hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C, azithromycin, rivaroxaban, and prednisone. And one last note: Do a lung tomography between the seventh and tenth days to see how you are doing. The only sensible thing.
Then the relative speaks to another doctor. Which says none of this works. But he also speaks to a WhatsApp group of the company’s infected people, who are now 14 years old. There they take azithromycin and they are better. She decides to take it. (May the future forgive us the super-resistant bacteria we are now cultivating as we try in vain to attack viruses with antibiotics without any criteria.)
Meanwhile I heard the story of an older friend who had to go to work. Got the virus. He took it home and felt the worst: “I destroyed my family,” says whoever was there. It got worse, worse, worse, went to the hospital. Intubated. Extubated. Intubated again. Cardiac arrest. He died. A meaningless death, a baseless family in the midst of the cloud of denial.
Another relative said last week his girlfriend tested positive for Covid. He had already taken both doses of Coronavac. It remains asymptomatic. The vaccine arrived on time for him and had to be persuaded by someone to take it. He was twice as lucky that many weren’t. And so we went. Apart from the “scores” nothing changes.
This column is published in Folha Corrida on Mondays.
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