Doing politics with health, by Lluís Foix

Two news comes from China. First, the Beijing government has confined Xi’an, a city of 13 million people, to discovering about two hundred new virus cases. It is the city of the Terracotta Army with thousands of life-size statues cast by hand and buried with the first emperor of China. Many Western visitors have seen these archaeological wonders. We know very little about how the pandemic affected the country of over 1.4 billion people in which the Covid virus was first detected. I suspect selective information has been applied, typical of authoritarian regimes.

The other news is that a sculptural group commemorating the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989 has been removed from the campus of the University of Hong Kong. The former British colony loses its liberties every day and is swallowed up by Beijing.

There is a lot going wrong when it comes to behaving in accordance with health standards

The tight censorship of the media in China contrasts with the information dispersal that the virus has caused in Spain, as it is across Europe. The problem is not the freedom we have in expressing our opinions about the decisions of Pedro Sanchez, Perry Aragon, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, Alberto Nunez Vigo or Zemo Puig.

The question is the political response to a serious health crisis. It must be said that the vaccination was successful in spite of those who collectively decided not to prick themselves. The dedication and professionalism of health workers in dealing with the epidemic has also been an example to follow. The blame that President Diaz Ayuso has directed at Madrid’s doctors and nurses is unacceptable.

Nor is it acceptable for Pedro Sanchez to hold an extraordinary meeting of the government so that the owner uses the mask outside without obtaining a report from the scientific community. I think it would be appropriate for you to tell us about the state of the hospitals, what proposals you have to introduce more health workers to the Public Health Service, and what your estimates are about the rapid spread of the omicron variant. Make a health policy, not a health policy. And that he appreciates and trusts more in the common sense of citizens.