During these Christmas holidays, now over, we have all had someone around us who, due to influenza A, covid or any other virus, has missed some of the meals or dinners. It has been the recurring theme of the holidays: the uncontrolled reappearance of respiratory viruses. Even the Department of Health has declared the mask mandatory in health centers.

We have ridiculed the value of the mask so much that recovering it now seems vintage to us, like returning to elephant-leg pants. Those times when, ridiculously, we were forced to enter a bar with a mask, we would take it off while we ate and chat with three people at a time and then go out to smoke and cover our mouths. Obligation bothers me in the face of ridiculous things like the one expressed. On the other hand, it is surprising that, after what was suffered, the veto was lifted in healthcare places due to the cocktail of viruses that may be dancing through their corridors.

The feeling of having learned little from the coronavirus pandemic has led us to think that everything was over. Applauding the health workers at eight in the afternoon was more of a collective psychological action against the human terror that we were suffering than a gratitude for his tremendous efforts. And now we prefer to avoid vaccines to avoid facing what we experienced again.

A couple of months ago I got vaccinated against flu and covid without having any need. A CAP doctor confessed to me that there are many people who decide not to get vaccinated because there are others like us who do it for them. And I no longer have disagreements with them, they are two irreconcilable visions. Since the vaccine is no longer mandatory, it is time for us to leave each other alone, but, just in case, I get vaccinated voluntarily knowing that I am not doing anyone any harm.

Panic is a very delicate material and, in the same way that we try to forget everything at once, we see how the emergencies collapse again and how one of our people has had a bus pass over them during these holidays to the limit of what bearable.

Now that everyone can do what they want, without ties or obligations, a mask in the bag and a vaccine in the arm are not bad recommendations, nor bad resolutions for this new year.