COVID-19, Is it True That the Virus Spreads Regardless of Who You Are?

Of course, it’s true. The COVID-19, like all viruses, strikes everyone: the rich, the poor, people all over the globe. Yet only some, like Pope Francis in his Easter homily, highlighted how not all of us have the same quality of life and benefit from sanitary devices, equipment and structures, not all of us have homes where we can isolate and defend ourselves from the developing emergency without the fear of contagion and without infecting others.

Imagine the large favelas in Latin America or the slums in Lagos, Bangkok, and Delhi and areas in South Africa. Hundreds of thousands of people live in desperate conditions without a house, without medicine, without adequate sanitation systems, with one doctor for every five thousand people, with one ventilator for every million, and beds in intensive care are a rarity.

There isn’t enough water to drink, to wash with, so we can forget about the first rule to wash our hands for at least 20 seconds!

Most of these people have concurrent diseases and weak and vulnerable immune systems. The principles of prevention and health education are virtually unknown.

When I visited the miraculous hospital built by Gino Strada in Sudan, I realized that it was an island in the desert, an endless desert.

There are people in these places in the world that don’t receive the information we get regularly on our smart phones and on the radio and TV because they live in shacks in utter poverty.

I don’t want to whine fruitlessly but I do want to sate an irrefutable truth: the virus spreads regardless of who you are but part of humanity is defenceless and in danger of being massacred.

There are things we can do immediately!
There are at least two that Joseph Stiglitz reminded us of in Internazionale:
1) G20 leaders must make full use of the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights, a form of “global money” that the institution was authorized to create at its founding to assist the neediest countries.
2) creditor countries can help by announcing a stay on developing and emerging economies’ debt service.