It was Tuesday 23 November 2021. NEWS 24/7 Magazine entered the ICU of the «Sotiria» Hospital the day after 105 deaths from Covid19 in a 24-hour period.
«The unit is complete. Seventeen out of 17 beds», was the first conversation. People who have been on the front line of the pandemic for 20 months are feeling, as they say, fatigue and frustration.
But the moment of the intubation of a patient, however, is always shocking.
24MEDIA Lab's shocking video from the ICU of the «Sotiria» hospital, shot the morning after the announcement of 105 deaths in one day, more than a criticism of the government, does a great service.
It presents the situation as it is. It gives meaning to phrases such as «unbearable pressure on the NHS» and «nursing staff pushed beyond their limits», which we hear all the time but have never seen what they mean. And we got used to them, disarming them as clichés.
The pandemic has been 20 months without a picture. Almost 18 000 people, the population of a city like Edessa or Florina, have died. Without knowing their names. Without knowing their story. Without a front page of a major newspaper being dedicated to them. Their anonymity protects the success story of the first wave, something that seems increasingly unrealistic.
And yet, the words and images that Kostas Koukoumakas and Giorgos Mutafis conveyed to us from the Intensive Care Unit and that Dimitris Koulelis put in the series with sobriety and sensitivity (as well as all the other, few, few journalistic such efforts have been made) are the real bell. The doctor's voice breaking, the patient's atrophied arm hanging on the bed, the alarm in front of flashing monitors and tubes keeping her alive, the intubation of Mrs. Chrysa (but, make no mistake, also the difficult period of her rehabilitation that follows) is the best campaign that could be done to make every citizen aware of what is going on. And then to take his notorious individual responsibility.
Instead, the information is inadequate, journalistic demands for more and clearer data go to waste (and/or are drowned in rumours of double bookkeeping in the EODY), in the afternoon briefing there has been occasional resentment over embarrassing questions (you know, from those «straight» ones), the previous health minister when he wasn't invisible couldn't say a word out of context, the current minister is Thanos Plevris.
For 20 months we have been trying to hide (and hide from) the pandemic. And the consequence has been that we have been mired in a non-debate that undermines the effort to get out of the tunnel. Or at least see some light at its edge.
There is no debate between vaccinators and anti-vaccinators. There is no debate between science and Gregorian chalks. Except that the government has never defended this approach. Since the situation got out of control it has gone full on divisive schemes culminating in the criminal bullshit about the «unvaccinated pandemic». Every time someone else is the enemy, this week it was Aris Servetalis in whose face we found out who is to blame for people not getting vaccinated (although he neither expressed an anti-vaccine discourse nor does it appear from anywhere that he sought to become an anti-vaccine symbol trying to maintain his own version - obviously misguided - of artistic consistency).
The Southwest is trying, in a way that becomes more and more annoying as time goes by, to reinforce its hegemony in such an extraordinary situation. And SYRIZA, after the awkward consensus at the beginning, has realized that the pandemic is probably the only way to bring down the government. The two stances may not carry the same weight - they don't both make decisions - but they show the unbearable cynicism of realpolitik.
In other words, this is «how politics is, you idiot».
«That's politics,» of course, until the video from «Salvation» dropped. Until the doctors and nurses speak out. We discredited them as misers/facilitators in a system whose pathologies grew with each political leadership, fired them from the TV screens and «asked the troika not to take credit for it’, we equipped them with one of the poorest infrastructures in the EU, we applauded them on the balconies when evil hit us, we called them »heroes« but we forget that they are still left alone to struggle in the field when everyone around them is communicating on their backs.
The severity with which the director of the ICU of «Sotiria» exposes the fake strengthening of the National Health System 20 months after the appearance of the coronavirus in our country, says it all without shouting.
The truth never makes noise.
