Aldo Mariátegui: “China or how arrogance always pays off” | OPINION

How life turns! Remember how Vizcarra was a god during the pandemic, how people sang happy birthday to him from their windows or there were even idiots drawing him next to Jesus or as a superhero?

Those were the times when criticizing Vizcarra and its poor handling of the pandemic, or questioning the poor quality of the Chinese vaccine made you feel hysterical. And his ministers, the Chilindrina Alva and Zamora, were untouchable, placed on the altars.

Eventually the truth emerged: Vizcarra turned out to be a thief (who secretly vaccinated herself), the Chinese vaccine a bluff, Calichina Alva an overrated minister who drowned the economy and her contemporary Zamora caused more Peruvian deaths that Chilean General Lynch.

Well, the same happened to China. This country has long dedicated itself to bragging about its confinement policies against the epidemic, its few deaths, its economic growth amidst the plague, the benefits of its vaccines. All with the talk that the West was in terminal decline, that the USA had that million dead due to its callous capitalism, etc.

Well, right now China is facing a colossal COVID-19 epidemic because it could no longer support that Vizcarrian recipe of locking everyone up because people were already rioting in the streets, despite a crackdown worthy of “1984”, and because the its economy could no longer take it (which itself is currently suffering from a severe and massive housing-financial crisis, similar to the one that devastated the West in 2008).

And they face this outbreak of COVID-19 with so many elderly people who have not been vaccinated, with far less vaccine than the West, and with a poor hospital system that will soon be overwhelmed.

Pride always pays off. Between this deadly flu and the real estate crisis, China has had its “welcome to reality”. For their sake, I hope it’s light.

PS: Merry Christmas!