Did humanity learn something from the last pandemic? Those who had to put their hands in the mass to fight it, “of course yes”, assumes Américo Pinheira Pereira, but what about the other common mortals? Are we all better prepared for similar events in the future? How to read the past, analyze the present and look to the future, so that the world is never surprised again?
The questions arose for Américo Pinheira Pereira and Fernando Ilharco, professors at the Catholic University of Portugal, in Lisbon, as the pandemic caused by SARS-COV-2 hit the world, and in particular Portugal. In the corridors of the college where they both teach, the information that was arriving was discussed, the cases, the dead, the measurements. And right in the first days, right there, in the corridors, the idea of a collective work that reflected on what was happening came up. The pandemic is not over yet, but the work is ready and will be launched on May 4, three years after it began. The title: Lessons from the Pandemic – Learning from a limiting experience. Américo Pinheira Pereira tells us what it was like: “In the same corridor where I was talking to people connected with nursing about what was happening, the idea came to me and I proposed to Professor Fernando Ilharco: “What if we did a multidisciplinary work? who will put their hands to work to reflect reality and the lessons that can be learned?”. Yes, “lessons”, he reinforces, “without being ashamed to call them lessons, because nowadays there is a lot of false modesty that one cannot give lessons, but one can and should”. The book, which brings together 40 authors from the most varied areas, from science to medicine, from history to politics, from economics to social solidarity, has been under construction for over a year and will be launched this Thursday at the João Paulo Library building. II, at the UCP, in Lisbon, with the presence of the Rector Isabel Capeloa and the Head of State of the Navy, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who directed the vaccination process against covid-19 in our country.
The purpose of the work, as reported by Américo Pinheira Pereira, “is to understand what humanity has learned from this type of extreme events, not only related to health, but also to others”. The truth is that, in his opinion, “one should already have learned from the Spanish flu pandemic, which had very serious consequences and the following ones, but, strangely, when one begins to perceive the trend of danger that the event that emerged in China could have, turning into something pandemic, what was seen was something that left me perplexed, as if nothing had been learned from any pandemic. And there were even films that were widely publicized on these topics, but, in fact, it seemed that governments, institutions and the population in general were completely unaware of this event”.
But today, confesses the Philosophy professor, “I have no doubt, and the work reflects this very well, that the people who were directly involved in the pandemic issues, whether at the decision-making level or at the most humble levels, have learned lessons extraordinary, but if we look around us what has actually been learned? Very little, perhaps.” But this is the conclusion that “I myself draw”, he assumes, because “the book does not draw conclusions”. In fact, “what we hope is that the people who read the work, each one for themselves, are able to draw their conclusions”, and that they ask themselves “if another virus appears tomorrow, because it is the most likely, even with a virulence bigger, would we be prepared?”.
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