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Vaccinate the future

Arsénio Reis*

The news we all expected was given in the past few days. PFizer and BioNTech, associated companies in search of a vaccine against Covid-19, announced that by the end of the year they will have one, with 90% effectiveness.

There are other vaccines on the way that may have identical results. Let us hope that they reach – as quickly as possible – to all countries and to all people on equal terms.

A year after the first case of a disease that proved to be pandemic was reported, the announcement of a vaccine created positive expectations around the world. This was reflected, for example, in an increase in the main world exchanges.

The hypothesis of a return to normality encourages all who have been subject to severe measures. We are back to believing in the end of the curfew, restrictions on living together, that is, maintaining social distance and the possibility of taking off the mask again, to give just a few examples.

We look forward to returning to work normally, going to school normally and using public transport, as well as other public services, as we always have.

But this would be a good opportunity for us not to limit ourselves all to returning to normal. It would be good to take the opportunity to change the way we all live, starting to respect more the signs that the world gives us, especially nature.

Not even on purpose, landscape architect Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles passed away this week in Portugal. Considered a visionary, a landscape poet, he was a tireless defender of ecological causes. Always committed to overcoming the dichotomy between the city and the countryside, a struggle that he saw not as an option, but as the only way to have a future, to survive.

He spent little time in politics. Just enough to leave us as important things as the National Agricultural Reserve (RAN) or the National Ecological Reserve (REN).

Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles took the environment as a cause. Not politics, but life. And in the struggle for this cause, there was no hesitation or compromise. I talked to him only two or three times, enough to realize that, in his opinion, our obligation was to help care for the environment and not just use it.

Now that the vaccine announcement allows us to sow hope in a better world again, we should all return to the ideas of Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles. That would be a good vaccine for our collective future.

*Director of Plataforma

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