PP deputy Santi Rodríguez tells Cafè d’idee s (La 2, Ràdio 4) that he likes the obligation to wear masks in health centers. What’s more: he explains that he accompanied his mother-in-law to get vaccinated and that, for an hour – and because of the nursing strike -, they waited for someone to appear in a room where there were other elderly (and vulnerable ) who, for the most part, did not wear a mask.
Rodríguez is a sensible deputy who, I am aware, some parties would like to have on their lists with the same secret intensity with which they would like to expel colleagues who, with organic resignation, are dragged along like a burden. Sometimes Rodríguez has to give explanations for decisions and stormy statements by PP leaders that invite people to think – I don’t know this – that he too would like to change his initials and shirt.
In El matí de Catalunya Ràdio, Dr. Manel Cervantes says that wearing a mask does not ensure that you will not catch the flu, but that, if you cough, it is useful to moderate the chain of contagions. The balance between preventing and avoiding alarmism and panic (more media than real) is a process under construction. The feeling of what are we left with? marks a public communication as erratic as that of other government departments. In Els matins (TV3), the Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, conveys a phlegmatic conviction and calls for the awareness of getting vaccinated that the ministry has not been able to transform with effective campaigns. Balcells says that people have relaxed when interpreting the threat of the epidemic. “Getting vaccinated is worth it,” he says, but I can’t get Rodríguez’s mother-in-law out of my head, waiting in a room with an uncertain outcome and with minimal information. In El món a RAC1, Josep Martí activates the turbo of the Tertullian controversy. He says that vaccines protect you but that he is misusing himself to say that they protect others and that coercive measures cause collateral damage.
By the way: Dr. Cervantes took advantage of the radio showcase to remind us that the positions left vacant by health professionals who retire or decide to emigrate are not being filled. This is indeed a structural emergency of the system, in the short, medium and long term. With reference to the nursing strike, Balcells claims the validity of the pact proposed by the ministry and, with a rhetorical energy that I don’t know if it is a strategy of anesthesia or palliative obviousness, resorts to the figure of the glass half empty and the glass is half full. By the way: in this matter of glasses half full and half empty, I always apply the wisdom of Bernard Pivot: “I love a glass half empty more than a glass half full. If I end up knocking over the glass, there will be less wetness on the dress of the person sitting next to me”.
