Is one worth one?

Covid's reality bathroom is what's missing ...

One is worth one, but there are those who think they are worth much more. The Covid experience has made us understand it between and even over the top. Do you remember the speeches of the spring  true? The refrain of experts and non-experts: «The old people die», «Those with previous pathologies are at risk», «The problem is with RSA». Reality has shown the opposite, but this way of saying and thinking in healthy people has almost fueled a sense of relief, a sort of magical fairyism that has lowered all caution. The "free all" of this summer, thanks to a confused and muddled institutional communication, did the rest: the mix that in the autumn brought our country back into the midst of a second wave. Saturated hospitals, many deaths, new lockdowns. And that basic idea of ​​continuing to feel different from others. Because it is now clear: the rule of "one is worth one" with Covid does not apply.

We have understood that in the concreteness of this time a student is worth less than those who work, an elderly hospitalized in an RSA less than those who are lucky enough to stay at home, the family of a young autistic less than an ordinary family, a worker without protection less than who is guaranteed. The examples could go on indefinitely. With some para¬dossi. Like the point of view of Angelo Ciocca, MEP of the League, when asked about vaccines. «We must evaluate the economic importance of the territory: Lombardy, as a matter of fact, is the engine of the whole country.

So if a Lombard gets sick it is worth more than if a person from another part of Italy gets sick. If in a company I have to invest in a fire-fighting system, I strengthen it where there is the server, where there is the human capital it produces. It is not just a question of Lombar¬dia or Lazio, it is true for a ministerial or a European bureaucrat, I say first the private employees. For me, on the other hand, a worker, a warehouse worker, a clerk, a Lombard entrepreneur is worth more than a Roman ministerial. Not because I am angry with him but only that to get out of this pandemic we have to invest in public debt and then we have to make it possible for those who produce in the private world to face the public debt ".

Is one worth one? Not at all! If we then widen our gaze to the rest of the world, the scenario is even sadder. According to the NGO network People’s Vaccine Al¬liance, in about 70 poor countries, 90% of the population is at risk of not having access to the vaccine. This is because more than half of the doses have already been purchased by the richest countries, where less than one sixth of the world population lives. "The high-income states came first and emptied the shelves," Andrea Taylor, a researcher at Duke University, told New York Times.

The United States, for example, has signed agreements for stocks of up to one and a half billion doses. Thus Canada, which in the next few months could be able to vaccinate the population as many as six times, followed by Great Britain with four and the European Union with two. Everyone else will be watching. Some low-income countries may wait until 2024 to have enough vaccines. Nothing new under the sun, if you consider that Africa managed to completely defeat polio only last August, 18 years after Europe.

Is one worth one? Unfortunately, no.

And maybe so many are okay with it. The future, however, still belongs to us if only we understand it, if we decide to broaden our gaze, to relaunch a common vision in which the "one" recognize themselves as equal in dignity, in needs, in their own humanity. To continue to feel "one", but finally becoming "us".

Matteo Spicuglia

NP Gennaio 2021