I remember the faces of fear and surprise when at the end of March 2020, we thought that this was going to last until May of the same year. May? Confined for so long? Without seeing our family? Without going to work?
The technology received a boost that, although it was already there, was when it began to be used in earnest. We started with Zoom meetings, two years into the pandemic we continue to laugh at those who forget to turn off their camera in the bathroom and constantly repeat or tell us: “your microphone is off” when we start talking. It wasn’t just work, we got together virtually with our friends, downloaded House Party, which by the way doesn’t exist anymore, dusted off board games, danced as a family for TikTok, made banana pancakes, drank wine (lots of wine), and started to fall in love with the world of plants. Human beings are predictable, in pain, fear and happiness, we act in the same ways.
The notices from CDMX police vehicles that arrived inside the houses: “We are on a health alert, so citizens are invited to withdraw from the streets and stay inside their homes to avoid contagion. Stay home, take care and take care of us. Remember, the goal is not to infect and not to get infected. If you have any symptoms such as dry cough, sore throat or fever, send a message to 51 51 5 with the word “Covid-19” or call Locatel”, they sounded like the prelude to a horror film.
My neighbors, from a large group of buildings, played Lucía Gil’s Return to Toast every day at 7:00 p.m., we went up to the roof with the phone’s flash on, other times we cried to the others we stopped what we were doing because the tunes caused a hole that devoured us. Until we got used to the horror, that of full hospitals, the lack of oxygen, the loss of jobs and the names of the dead that accumulated among whom we began to find friends and relatives. We were breathless with the images of the New York hospitals where the bodies were piled up, and those of the streets of Peru where they carried their lifeless relatives to the sidewalk, waiting for them to be picked up. We also witnessed violence of which health personnel were victims, when, unaware, their neighbors and other people threw chlorine water at them to try to “disinfect” them.
It took us a while to learn, the parking lots still display the crosses that try to create a healthy distance between cars! The already dry sanitizing mats in most cases continue to receive us, and we have not stopped insisting on taking the temperature of visitors even if it’s in your hand. Until January 30, 2022, the page coronavirus.gob.mx still does not have the use of face masks among the prevention measures for citizens. Among those that are found is going to the doctor only in an emergency (which reminds us of the many deaths from Covid in Mexico and the negligent policy that left many people who could have received timely care to die at home), cough or sneeze into the inside of your elbow, and don’t spread fake news.
We get used to horror, and we get excited about science, that no matter how far we think we have advanced, nature has taught us until today, that we were not going to get rid of the two years it took to end other pandemics.
Two years after the pandemic was declared an international emergency, everything feels like a dream, and we don’t know for sure if we really want to go back to being the same as before.
Mexican journalist, host, broadcaster, writer and communicator
guest column
Mexican journalist, host, announcer, writer and communicator. Hosts the program “A Todo Terreno” on MVS Radio. He has written for various publications and worked in different spaces on radio and television.