Responsibility instead of cockfights

We have already reached 100 dead a day from Covid0-19, with 600 patients intubated in intensive care units.

Hospitals are having to reduce regular surgeries to deal, day and night, with Covid patients, whose numbers are increasing by almost 10,000 a day. Some of them are fully vaccinated, waiting for the booster shot.

The country should be on general alert, with the stern and reliable infectious disease expert Sotiris Tsiodras giving daily briefings for the fourth wave of the pandemic, with vaccination teams knocking on doors in rural towns and villages for vaccine deniers aged over 60, and with political leaders joining forces to send a message of unity to the public.

Instead, the government continues to insist on the incomprehensible narrative that the country is steadily moving toward normalcy, with ministers each announcing their own policies in front of cameras and microphones, while the main opposition tries to trip up the government by throwing out embarrassing slogans – “if you cannot do the job, leave, so that we can take responsibility for the difficult decisions” – and the former deputy health minister panders to the unvaccinated.

At the same time, representatives of different sectors are demanding financial support and shutting down in protest, blackmailing the country.

Rear Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who has presided over Portugal’s successful vaccination campaign, which has inoculated more then 85% of the population, told Kathimerini in an interview last week that his country managed to stop the spread of the pandemic because everyone was convinced “that it was a war with the coronavirus, in which society must fight united and not each person alone.”

In the process, the admiral said, he made doctors, nurses, pharmacists, mayors, and even patient associations his allies.

“They all became part of the national effort, so they could not oppose it. I thus reduced the reactions and increased the antibodies of the system,” he said.

“We are a country with a long history and strong social consciousness,” he continued. “We have learned that in order to survive we must support each other. Every time we receive an external attack, we unite domestically.”

Let’s not waste anymore time with political cockfights and cheap impressions.