The coronavirus pandemic has caused many casualties around the world. However, there are more factors to analyse the reasons underneath this tragedy.
Death is usually a sacred time. It is the moment for tears, remembering those who have passed away. But it is also a good chance to think about what might come after this short life we live on Earth. Therefore, it should be a time to be calmed down, to reflect and meditate, to thank for all what these lives have been, the ones that belong to God but were lived by our beloved relatives or friends. Finally, to assess what they left behind and see what their mission and purpose were like, while they were alive. Hopefully some useful lessons for us might come out of this.
Nobody doubts about the fact that an illness does not discriminate among people, but external conditions and social environments do. And it makes all the difference.
There is, as a matter of fact, a huge gap between population layers that has always been there. Nevertheless, the pandemic revealed it mercilessly. The virus in itself can affect anybody, rich or poor, white or black, people in developed countries or in the so called third world. It is usually transmitted by close contact between people. As a consequence, the more contacts you have got, the more chance to get infected. The logical reaction to stay safe and healthy is avoiding gatherings, and in general, physical interaction with others. But not everyone can afford to stay away from people and keep earning money for a living. Not even strict quarantines have been enough to keep people indoors.
There are several factors underneath this grim reality. Take a look, for instance, to the need most people have to work outside their homes to make a living, like street vendors in poor countries. It is their only income source so it is not something that can be carried out on line. It is true that people who have enough technology skills have been able to import their usual economic activity onto a digital environment but that is not the case for thousands of people in peripheral neighborhoods in huge Latin American cities such as Guayaquil or Sao Paulo.
On the other hand, there are more cases. Doctors and nurses who have been working on the front line to cure infected people and prevent the virus from spreading. They are also a population under risk; and in some countries, like Mexico, they have even been threatened by the sole fact of being health workers. They have often been seen as virus carriers. It is impossible to think about a more unfair situation such as this one.
Even in rich countries, the United States for example, there is a deep division among people according to their ethnic background, socioeconomic class and other factors. If you are a white person who lives in a well-off zone of New York or L.A., you are more likely to stay at home earning a decent salary or you might have enough funds to face the emergency without going out to work. It does not happen the same with a lot of African-American or Hispanic people who have low incomes or must have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Some of them do not have a medical insurance, they have been afraid of going to hospitals because they are illegal migrants who might be deported as soon as their status is revealed. This is where the difference lies. Populations like these ones are more at risk than wealthier people in many countries.
That is exactly why, in Guayaquil, during March and April 2020, lots of people began to die in their own homes and stayed there for several days before they could be picked up and buried by health workers or police officers. The whole system was overflown. Bodies were piled up outside large hospitals and their relatives had to struggle in order to find out whether their beloved ones were dead or alive. In some cases, they even had to pay extra (illegal) money to hospital clerks to find the corpses.
Unfortunately, there is more; corruption has been another factor that has added more suffering and desperation. If local and national governments, in countries such as Ecuador, had managed resources with transparency and common sense, hospitals would not have been overwhelmed, they would have had enough room for all patients or emergency intensive care units could have been set up to receive the extra number of ill people. But this is an hypothetical situation; the reality in Guayaquil and other Ecuadorian cities is that some hospital managers took advantage of the emergency situation and their position to make profit by buying overpriced health supplies. The mechanism was pretty simple, they avoided legal procedures and rules by purchasing these items to companies related to them or their friends. In some cases, a simple plastic bag to wrap a corpse was bought for one hundred and fifty dollars. It is a massive surcharge, not only for one bag but for thousands of them. In addition, there have been masks, protective gowns and so on.
Final result? Dead people got buried in donated cardboard coffins. Neither their relatives nor the State had the resources to pay for a burial and a wooden casket. In some cases, the family did not even know where their beloved ones had been put to rest. They had to search from one graveyard to another in order to finally have a place to sob and say goodbye.
The novel coronavirus is lethal and it has taken around a half million lives by now but who knows how many out of them could have been saved if social injustice were not so large, if wealth were not so unevenly distributed and governments were not a nest full of corrupt officials.
We could not foresee that a pandemic was on its way to hit the world. We do not have all the privileged information Bill Gates had to see this coming. However, our governments could have been prepared for any emergency situation by supplying all the necessary equipment and room to hospitals, by saving money and financial resources in order to provide enough personal protective equipment to health workers, police forces and public clerks in general. In other words, the novel coronavirus is lethal and it has taken around a half million lives by now. It is a very high death toll; but who knows how many out of them could have been saved if social injustice were not so large, if wealth were not so unevenly distributed and governments were not a nest full of corrupt officials.
Written by: Nicolás Dousdebés C.
Picture source: https://www.catastrofesmundiales.com/en-ecuador-reparten-ataudes-de-carton-en-medio-de-crisis-por-el-covid-19/
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