Since the middle of March I received first sporadically, then several times a day, photos and videos that deal with Corona in a joking way. At the same time I was on the phone with friends * from different countries who are directly affected by the disease.
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The news showed pictures of the chaos in clinics, at national borders, and mass graves dug by bulldozers.
As of May 1, 2020, there are 233,416 dead worldwide with Covid-19, and I will never forget the pictures from Italy and Spain, New York, Ecuador, India and China.
"The poorer the states and populations, the more severe the effects of the crisis. At the very moment when the global South needs help from the rich countries, the opposite happens. ... More than 100 billion dollars have been withdrawn from the crisis -ridden South by investors since the beginning of the year. But there is something narrow and heartless about this gaze. Internal solidarity is working. What happens beyond the well-fortified borders disappears more than usual from the radar of perception.
(Stefan Reinecke, Lockdown is luxury with us, taz 6.4.2020)
The bizarre videos that I have collected show consuming societies that shower themselves with disinfectants, hoard toilet paper, dance, eat and drink. Societies that at the same time go crazy about themselves in social distancing.
"With its defense against the possibility of suffering, humor occupies a place in the great series of those methods that human soul life has developed to escape the compulsion of suffering.
(Siegmund Freud, The Humor, Vienna, 1927)
In Germany, the pandemic is comparatively mild. There are 6,518 dead. In Cologne 90 people have died. Nevertheless, my everyday life was also completely upset.
We will be changed.
Which direction we go in the future, depends on the decisions we make now.
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