We woke up this morning in panic due to the drumming of news coming from Italy and the world.
The number of deaths yesterday in Italy (over 700 in one day) had an echo all over the world and so did the news of an increase in the disease in countries, such as Pakistan, which seemed exempt from it.
I sincerely hope that this contagion will immediately cease and that it will not affect areas of the world that are already precarious in terms of health and economics. I am thinking, for example, of Africa where the health service is lacking and where often the lack of water and sanitation conditions would favor the spread of the epidemic.
Speaking from my Italian pulpit, on the strength of my experience in the field, I sincerely pray all the countries that are facing the abyss of this contagion to respect the basic hygiene and health standards, which should always be respected.
Beyond the closure of schools with kindergarten and home children, as well as middle and high school students, there is suffering in the younger population and also in the elderly population afflicted by the fear of death. The role of women as always is fundamental to give not only material but also psychological support to one’s family and to bear the weight of the offspring isolated and confined within four walls and which requires distance education.
Italy’s mistake was initially to underestimate the extent of the epidemic. From the first case of the Lombardy region with escalation to Milan, Bergamo and Brescia, not to mention other northern regions, the government announcements were propagated by the mass media in advance, thus favoring a massive exodus of workers and students who poured into south of Italy. This has favored the triggering of an unprecedented chain reaction that has hit and is affecting the weaker sections of the Italian population (the oldest in Europe, around 23%).
Why did people escape before the “red”, infected northern regions closed? Because they are students and workers who have sought refuge in the family and so some of them (perhaps healthy carriers) have exported the infection to areas that have not been contaminated until then.
Now my advice, in light of the above, is to follow the Chinese example by immediately closing the areas in which the first case appeared and following the path taken by the so-called “healthy carriers”, who went unnoticed as they are not clearly ill.
The example of the cleverly managed crisis in Wuhan, with a population of about 11 million inhabitants, should have illuminated the minds of our rulers and instead this did not happen because of the desire for omnipotence that makes us think we are immune from all evil.
True immunity exists only if we can build an armor against the negativity that comes to us from the outside and, in this, often the mass media do not help us, indeed they suffocate us through negative news that further depress our immune system.
Perhaps it is the message that the virus wants to give us, a signal that reaches us from heaven. We humans have destroyed almost 60% of living species, dilapidated the resources of mother nature, ignored the signals that came from extreme events about the precariousness of the planet in the grip of man-induced climate change.
Humanity is devastated by wars, by injustices of all kinds: in Iran the fury against a people weakened by the sanctions imposed by Trump; in Palestine a people confined in a narrow space, a forced prison, with excessive overcrowding due to the continuous expansion of Israeli settlers; in Kashmir, the new Palestine of Asia, the Indian curfew that has lasted for almost eight months (from August 5, 2019); not to mention Syria at war for nine years now, Yemen; Libya; Iraq etc.
The curtain now rises on the evil of the world induced by a few powerful people. The virus calls us to a sense of humanity that has been lost, to respect for our planet, to human rights, to a principle of equity and equality that seems to have come less and less.
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At the beginning of the third millennium, the time has come to join us in a choral prayer, a universal chorus of peace, harmony and love, taking note of past mistakes and trying to look to the future with courage and determination.
This is not the moment of panic, but a bridge of brotherhood between all men: humanity needs an injection of peace, to return to dream of a fairer, more aware, more supportive world.
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