There was applause. There was respect. The health personnel received a gesture of solidarity. And although the communion that was established at the beginning of the pandemic was not recovered, this applause condensed expectations about what is already known to happen in the country: Two people die a day in the health sector
. It becomes evident, in the first line, the stoic and the human. This was applauded in many Buenos Aires neighborhoods and in several cities in the interior, on the night of the 17th.
The call was launched on social networks to pay tribute to health teams before a system that begins to express limits. The message that made the call viral was precise: “Applaud our health heroes.” And, as described by the psychoanalyst Marcela Ospital, “Reissue the move from the start of the pandemic, recover that mystique.” The date coincided with the anniversary of the death of José de San Martín. “The applause” was not massive, grant the comments on social networks, but It came as the other side of the opposition march and so it stood out. “We are the silent majority that endures and is grateful,” reads the tweet that imposed it on the ideological discussion about mandatory isolation. “If this disease killed young people and without prior conditions, there would be no antiquarantine marches,” says Marina Anido, from the Argerich Hospital.
The applause made a difference with the protest that in the afternoon invaded more TV screens than squares, with a powerful speech in itself, but imprecise: the request for“freedom”. “But leaving puts them at risk and then we are going to have to keep watch over them in hospitals,” summarizes Yanina López, a doctor who works in two hospitals in CABA.
“The applause is an encouragement for the people who are on the front line,” Ospital points out about the most exposed personnel. “That work is not indifferent to the population is important, because they are the ones who have to continue supporting this. And it’s good to know that there are people who support you, because there are also people who have hostile attitudes ”. López confirms this: he felt the hostility of his colleagues when he had to go to an isolation hotel due to contact with a COVID-positive patient.
The pandemic advances, life is on hold. However, there is a determination in that litany: “Free people will march when the pandemic passes,” says the poet Silvia Castro on the wall. “Social consent regarding the measures to confront the pandemic has become perversely politicized and people act against their own health, it is worrying,” says Ospital. In this context, the move to recognize health workers is revalued: “Returning mystique to this does us all good. In other words, it focuses on the fact that the quarantine is for the good of all and not for the bad of anyone, as Martín Fierro used to say ”, he points out.
The call for applause was spontaneously armed with the exponential volatility of every message that spreads virally on digital networks. It was proposed to honor “the personnel who take care of us”, the health personnel. Gabriela Deleisi, who shared the idea of returning to this recognition on Twitter, tells Page 12 that “the story started a few days ago, when a tweeter posted a message asking why we weren’t applauding the health workers.” Delesisi found it purposeful, and accompanied her, along with many others.
“I had been wondering why the applause had declined so much,” Silvia Castro went over, “and this initiative is going that way, I applaud it with four hands.” And she explains: “applause is a way of putting the body on. People who work in health are full-bodied, on the front line. We give a hand. And hopefully the State can give something more to reverse the job insecurity of health personnel ”.
“The experienced personnel are paid very well by the private sector,” says Héctor Ortiz, nurse and ATE delegate at the Durand Hospital, “but the city does not want to recognize us as professionals, it takes us as administrative staff, and the nurses are the most exposed they are and are the ones who are dying the most from the pandemic ”. The chorus on Twitter continued in tune with his reflection: “We are going to applaud everyone who leaves everything to save lives. We have to take care of ourselves for them. We are the silent majority that endures and is grateful, “the networks subscribed.
“My mother was a nurse,” reads the wall of the writer María Pía López. “And dealing with death or the daily bustle with pain is not gratuitous,” her story continues. While many of us today enjoy a holiday or work from home, thousands cover their shifts in hospitals and clinics. Thousands take a risk. If they did not, the catastrophe would be unstoppable. Let us collaborate, at least, not showing off the irresponsibility of calling suicidal egoism freedom ”.
One story among many
“I appreciate the applause, the recognition is nice,” says doctor Yanina López. “But I would be more grateful if they stay at home and do not go out to make fancy dress like the antiquarantine march,” she emphatically adds. “Today is a weird day. Yesterday I had a heavy guard, I admitted a newborn with covid. It is the third that has coronavirus ”, he says firmly. He talks about his guard in the Ramos Mejía neonatology service. Yanina is on the front line. Since the beginning of the pandemic, it has received pregnant women and newborns. She was in contact with infected patients and she was also in hotels, and also her husband, although they were not positive.
Yanina returned to activity two weeks ago. But in the hospitals where she works, she was harassed when it became known that she had been in contact with covid-positive patients. This gives a frame to her words when she says: “The recognition is nice, but I value more it is that my colleagues, the population and the health system treat me well. That people comply with the isolation and that they do not come out to say anything, and that there is material to work and sustain the situation ”.
“I would value more that people stay at home, that they do not go out to march through a judicial system that they believe does not represent them, because what is in dance is the game of the right, because these people have less personality than a tile ”, Sentence. She is angry. It does not hide it. And she complains: “Because after these, you have to hold the candle in hospitals,” she says.
He knows the sector, and his data has an impact: “What happens in the north of the country where the health system collapses is serious. And the change in the average age that was 60, and now is my age: 30 something, that is, it is less than 40 years. He maintains that the idea that “the young person does not die” is not real. “But it can be prevented,” he warns. That is why he insists on “distance and isolation, the basics.”
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