The beautiful summer

It will be a beautiful summer, if ... the Covid that killed and sowed suffering, undermined our lives, sometimes even our "inside" continues to decrease in intensity.

Almost everyone is free: off the masks, but not in transport and, of course, in hospitals. It is the first summer that we can live with three vaccinations, if we add a pinch of prudence, of caution, of attention, of hand washing, it will be serene, very serene. Back to the mountains, to the sea, to the beach.
How wonderful! Graduality pays, the "free all" does not: off the green pass first, now more, then more, but with an eye to the contagions that are fluctuating because the virus has not disappeared.

Unless Biden is right: "There will be another pandemic and we need to be" ready "to face it with the necessary vaccines and treatments". You said this at the opening of the Plenary Assembly of the IX Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Biden invited the other heads of state and government to "work together" to face the challenges for the future, from the health emergency to the energy transition, from food insecurity to "unprecedented" migration, to the affirmation of democracy. In the meantime, here with us, instead, routine interventions in hospitals have resumed, even the "serene prevention" exams, waiting times are reduced except in the emergency room, even if the accumulated delays are enormous.

We have been hoping for months in which some window of peace will be opened even in the brutal massacre in Ukraine. Already it seems that the "wheat routes" are bringing out common sense and reason after more than one hundred days of madness following the Russian invasion. And so also the war, the second scourge after the pandemic, we hope can move towards a possible armistice and a path of pacification.

The economic crisis remains to complete what could have turned out to be the "perfect storm" with the explosion in commodity prices. Unfortunately, inflation is galloping and is affecting everyone's shopping carts. We'll see.

But it will be a beautiful summer if, together, we try to defuse the "side effects" caused by the two years that the coronavirus has stolen from each of us: open oratories, courtyards that come to life again, crowded streets, parties, cultural meetings, salons that they try to rekindle the economy. Social relations also return, albeit at times clouded by suspicions of the contagion. But yes, we are at the beginning of the end because we have the power of prayer!

Gian Mario Ricciardi
NP June / July 2022