Those 15 minutes in a chair after receiving the second vaccine at Fira de Barcelona, that field hospital that is still an authentic logistics-sanitary miracleThey were the prelude to something very similar to freedom, a long-awaited relief. The silence, the same as in the queue to enter the small consulting rooms, presaged a tribute, the collective memory for all the family or friends who suffered the covid. For those who did not overcome it and for those who entered the intensive care unit not knowing; and without company. Why that, not knowing, is perhaps the worst of this pandemic. Now comes a new variant, the omicron, which many insist on locating geographically – as Trump did with the “chinese virus“or the” Wuhan virus “- and the vaccine is no longer enough to save confinement in the case of being a close contact with a positive. This is the chronicle of a casuality, but it is also about the globalization, doubts and the management of public affairs.
Catch a intercontinental flight under these circumstances it is a peculiar experience. Despite the dump truck of hours on board, few people leave their seats. To go to the bathroom, at the most. Or to visit a mother who travels, as it should be, first. Before, travelers stretched their leg muscles on the bathroom landing, they scanned the horizon from the window of the bathroom. Emergency exit or they just paced up and down the hall to keep their ankles from swelling up like a turkey on Thanksgiving. It is also true that now the audiovisual offer on board is much more complete than before, when they only put ‘Speed’ on you and, thank you, they eliminated the final scene of an exploding plane. Masks on, silence and obedience; an air mass. The return trip had a similar cut, with the exception that next to the writer sat a Russian man who looked like a former Zenit Saint Petersburg center. the game of ‘mansplaining’ is over on both sides of his chair. Impossible to cross that Rubicon.
It was time to do stopover in Amsterdam: they already know, Barcelona is not a ‘hub’But we won’t open that lazy melon now. The plane from Schiphol even El Prat was a melting pot of diverse origins and a single destination. The central europe airport He is a colossal passenger dispatcher, the kind where the boarding gate is a 20-minute walk away, like going from Plaça de Catalunya to Cinc d’Oros. Thus, in the passage there were people who came from Asia, America and Africa, mixed up and wanting to get home. Everything’s fine. It was 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 28, and yes, in the queue you could make out a couple of men who they came from johannesburg. Their shirt betrayed them with letters and drawings of a ‘trekking’ through South Africa. But who knows, if he has taught anything this year and a half it is to not to point out or to presuppose. Not to blame. Two days later, on Tuesday, Salut confirmed two suspected cases of omicron in Catalonia. One of them was traveling on that plane, mecachis. And, curiously, another positive was on the flight to Madrid that left shortly before from the door next to that of the KL1673. That quarter of an hour after the vaccination came back to mind, that light of hope. How naive …
And the PCR …?
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Thursday night, December 2, the phone rings. A very kind lady, with a Girona accent and on behalf of the Department of Health, is in charge of giving the news, of confirming this happy coincidence. The day before, the signatory had already carried out a PCR in the neighborhood CAP because when he returned from the trip the information arrived that a relative we had visited had just tested positive (standard variant), and the snot and congestion upon landing generated reasonable doubts. False alarm at home: a cold and negative test. But now things were very different. That is why knowing little or nothing about the omicron variant. The informant indicates that they will call the next day (Friday) to carry out a special test, different from the one we already know, and that is only practiced in four primary care centers from the city. The lady remembers that I have to spend 10 days at home, counting from last Sunday, even if I have been vaccinated. That is, until Wednesday, December 8. But four days had already passed … Living together at home with a wife and three small children, going to see mother, eat with a friend, of running through the mountains alone or accompanied, of hanging out with diary companions and by profession. The protocol does not indicate that it is necessary to notify anyone, since no positive confirmed. No symptoms, since the cold also subsides. But guilt and doubts assail. What if…
It is already Saturday and there is no call to make that test that seemed priority, even urgent. Do youSalut will have contacted with the rest of the ticket on flight KL1673 to do the PCR when six days have passed? Have the relatives and closest associates of the positive from South Africa already gone to the CAP? Why is confinement not limited to people sitting in the proximity of the affected taking into account that direct contact is considered if you were within two meters of the infected person for 15 minutes and the plane renews the air constantly? Not knowing, in this case seasoned with a certain stupor. Here we will continue, with pajamas, teleworking, looking out the window and without waiting too long for that call. A bit like March 2020, but with a Christmas tree.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com