Posts Tagged ‘pandemia’
Quarantine and Lent
17
Feb
Those who manage to live this long quarantine, which enters the
second year, as perspectives and hopes are true, but also with anguish and concerns, understand that there is a cause for attention, encouragement and concern, especially with the anguished. There was no carnival, and there is no reason to party, it is true that some groups insist, but if we look at the number of people compared to society as a whole, they are a minority, the majority are concerned and want us to have a way out of this suffering soon.
For Christians it is a period of prayer, fasting and abstinence, it means to abstain from some things that the new normal is already taking away from us, however this can be done voluntarily, thinking about the society as a whole that suffers. Representative of Catholicism, but also of Christianity, Pope Francis always looks at the whole human family with tenderness and passion as a good Latin, in his February 12 message he invited us “Let’s go up to Jerusalem…” (Mt 20, 18) which means how he himself explains a “journey of conversion, prayer and sharing of our goods”, and so to live this Lent with an attentive eye to those suffering from abandonment and anguish because of the pandemic (in the photo the door where Jesus began his final journey in Jerusalem).
When Jesus approaches Jerusalem, he goes there to live the days of the Passover, the Jews already celebrated it and still celebrate it today, but it does not always coincide due to the Jewish calendar being different from our Christian, but the lamb that is “sacrificed” during Easter, referring to the sacrifice Abraham made in place of his son, it is Jesus himself this lamb at Christian Easter.
The quarantine of all is the pandemic, saying words of encouragement that comfort, comfort, strengthen, stimulate instead of words that humiliate, distress, irritate and despise emphasized the Pope.
I think that due to the quarantine situation it will be a different Lent, in which we will go deeply into our pains as humanity, and we will be able to think about a much more promising and hopeful future ahead, Lent is not just death, we go through it , but the resurrection that is on the other side for the one who accepts to pass through the narrow door.
All humanity suffers, so it is a moment of passion for all humanity, and those who are fraternal and supportive will know the way to alleviate the pain of those who suffer.
It is time to think about the essentials of life, to review our false paths of progress and to review our personal lives.
Coronavirus variants and release
15
Feb
While in the UK it is already confirmed that the vaccine does not
work for the virus variants, called the Bristol variant and confirmed by the British government, British scientist Sharon Peacock broke the news on Thursday (11/2) that the variant it has already spread across the UK and will sweep the world, so the pandemic crisis is far from over.
AstraZeneca reported that it will take 9 months for the vaccine to be ready for this variant, together with the University of Oxford the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FioCruz) participates in the production of the vaccine.
In Brazil, reports Agência Brasil, the presence of the P. variant has already been identified by FioCruz. in five other states, in addition to Amazonas, Pará, Paraíba, Roraima, Santa Catarina and São Paulo, the health secretariats of Bahia, Ceará and Pernambuco have also identified the variant.
According to the Bloomberg website the UK is already reaching 52 million vaccinated (the country has close to 67 million inhabitants), even so LockDown has not yet been relieved, it serves as a warning to other countries, it is likely to open gradually, and gradual measures should be taken, studied on a case-by-case basis.
It remains to be seen how the case of the variant will be thought of, from a peak of 52,000 cases in early February dropped to 13,000 on Saturday (02/13), but the British scientific community is intensively analyzing the case of the variant to take the measures of release.
In the world there is a drop to 410 thousand cases, it is a slow drop, but it is already possible to think that even with the variant there is a hope that the vaccine will work within the limits of effectiveness.
It is up to each to maintain the care and not to relax until the effects of the vaccine are felt.
Wanting to heal to a new normal
12
Feb
Carnival would start today in Brazil, there are those who regr
et this impossibility even thinking about a pandemic that shows no signs of weakening, even countries that are advancing with the vaccine, as in the case of Portugal, England and the United States the signs that the virus circulates are still strong.
Morin’s book alerts us to lessons that the pandemic should have taught us, but it is not what is actually observed, so not only do we need other “cures” like human fragility itself in the face of the virus and other pathologies, including social ones, can remain.
It is necessary to want to heal and we discover that this cure is collective and codependent, we need everyone to be healthy and a society that does not look at the most fragile or that despises them and condemns the life of loneliness and death has not yet achieved a lasting cure that point to lasting solidarity.
We learned the harshness of isolation and loneliness, even if in family, but how many people live like this in the so-called normality, that the new normal brings a greater human aggregation to all, that traces what Edgar Morin calls a new humanity more humane.
May the vaccine immunize us, but let us learn co-immunity as Peter Sloterdijk advocated even before the epidemic, and it did not refer to the immunity of the disease, but in a broader sense that immunity that makes us a humanity capable of defending itself against tyrannies and social diseases.
The biblical passage in which a leper approaches Jesus and asks on his knees: “If you want, you have the power to heal yourself”, Jesus, compassionately reached out, touched him and said: “I want you to be healed!” (Mark 1: 40-41).
There are two essential points: the leper’s burning desire with faith to heal and divine compassion for him to be healed, human faith and righteousness attract divine power, those who believe know this.
People today want to change to a new normal or remain frivolous normal life.
It’s time to change of way
11
Feb
It is not my proposal, but the name of the last book by Edgar
Morin (Editor Bertrand do Brasil, 2020), the almost centenary French philosopher shows the lessons of the coronavirus that we resisted in learning, it is also very similar to the name of Peter Sloterdijk’s book : You have to change your life (publisher Relógio d´Água, 2018) this well before the coronavirus.
Before moving on to some of Morin’s lessons, I want to say that we ALL need to change our lives, the planet has run out, words have run out, polarizing politics runs out, and unfortunately sweet words like “fraternity”, “solidarity”, “compassion” ”And so many others seem to be only the will of some that others change, without, however, that each one changes himself first.
The preamble is a historical retrospective from the Spanish flu to May 68 and the current ecological crisis, the lessons from the coronavirus in chapter 1 I comment on at the end.
I begin at the end to affirm that Morin, who also shares values of fraternity, of planetary citizenship, of overcoming inequalities, etc., has in his book a very clear proposal, after demonstrating that the crisis is prior to the coronavirus that only worsened it , on page 4 sentence “… there are two inseparable requirements for political renewal: to leave neoliberalism, to reform the state” (page 46), which will provide the means in chapter 3.
This is actually your second point in the cap. 2 Post-corona challenges, the challenge of the political crisis, of the nine challenges it points to in current crises: the existential challenge, also pointed out in Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti Encyclical, the challenges of crises: globalization, democracy, digital, ecological protection, the economic crisis, uncertainties and the danger of a major setback (pages 44 to 53).
The 15 lessons from the coronavirus: about our existence, isolation shows us how those who “did not have access to the superfluous and the frivolous and deserve to reach the stage where we have the superfluous” live (page 23), on the condition recalls the Meadows report, which pointed to the limits of growth, the lesson about the uncertainty of our life, the lesson of our relationship with death, the lesson about our civilization (life turned outward, without inner life, the life of shopping malls and happy hours), the awakening of solidarity, inequality and social isolation, the diversity of situations and the management of the epidemic, the nature of a crisis, the 9 initial lessons.
The lesson about science and medicine, do we understand “that science is not a repertoire of absolute truths (unlike religion” (page 33), the crisis of intelligence, which he wisely divides into “invisible complexities” the way of knowledge “of human realities (growth rate, GDP, opinion polls, etc.” (page 35), point 2. is the ecology of action, it warns that action can “go in the opposite direction to what is expected and return like a boomerang to the head of the one who decided it” (page 35), how many actions and speeches fell in this ditch.
The twelfth lesson is the inefficiency of the state, which, in addition to neoliberal politics, yields “to pressures and interests that paralyze all reforms” (page 38), while polarization deepens.
The thirteenth lesson is national relocation and dependence, and regrets “that the national problem is so poorly formulated and always reduced to the opposition between sovereignty and globalization” (page 39), note the speeches that polarize and do not leave this circle vicious.
The fourteenth lesson is the crisis in Europe, I remember Sloterdijk’s book “If Europe woke up”, and Morin opens the wound: “on the shock of the epidemic, the European Union broke into national fragments” (page 40) .
The fifteenth lesson is the planet in crisis, quotes Prof. Thomas Michiels, biologist and specialists in virus transmission: “There is no doubt that globalization influences epidemics and favors the spread of the virus. When observing the evolution of past epidemics, there are notable examples in which it is noted that epidemics follow railways and human displacements. There is no doubt, the circulation of individuals aggravates the epidemic ”(page 41).
MORIN, E. (2020) É hora de mudarmos de via: lições do coronavírus, transl. Ivone Castilho Benedetti, collaboration Sabah Abouessalam. Rio de Janeiro, BR: Bertrand do Brasil.
Urgent: change thinking and teach to live
10
Feb
When we propose a model that is not that of the world of life, Husserl made a
philosophy of it, his Lebenswelt, Habermas made it a sociology, Heidegger and Gadamer incorporate it in his thoughts, but the end that is life if not learning. But we didn´t learning from the pandemic.
The central problem of seeking a “clearing” is that we create models too far from life, from its defense including nature, dignity and living itself, we are in a Yellow September, whose theme is none other than to say that it is worthwhile. It is worth living.
thought”. We will have a clearing, but it will not last long, and we could start a big change now, then there may not be time.
Clinging to already outdated methods and models, logicists and neopositivists, it is not pointed out “the nature of knowledge, which itself contains the risk of error and illusion” (MORIN, 2015, p. 16).
The great complexity theorist proposes, first of all, a return to philosophy (in the sense of primary thinking) in its Socratic condition of dialogue, Aristotelian (in the sense among others, of the organization of information), Platonic (questioning of appearances), and even pre-Socratic (questioning the world, inserting knowledge in modern cosmology), finally cannot teach life without knowing that it has dilemmas, errors and options.
Morin, who could boast of wisdom by age, by intense intellectual activity, from the pedestal of those full of certainties, no doubt or misconceptions that we see parading through the gyms and public stands of devouring and unquestioning media.
Morin seeks to “conceive the instruments of a thought that is pertinent because it is complex” (Morin, 2015, p. 23), and we see the barbarism of dogma and little elaborated certainties.
Ready-made phrases, self-help manuals, (mainly economic) laissez-faire, rudeness, and ideological hysteria deepen today’s cultural, humanitarian, and social crisis.
It scares me that book readers are so sure with so little thought, in fact criticism of thought grows and the praise of ignorance seems to win any argument.
Morin encourages us and brings us to a still visible and possible future, his lecture at the Frontier of Thought (2016) (Conference in Brazil) is a hope and a deepening that sheds new light.
MORIN, Edgar: Ensinar a viver: manifesto para mudar a educação. Trad. Edgard de Assis Carvalho e Mariza Perassi Bosco. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2015
Existence, repetition and Being
09
Feb
In philosophy you can have form (morphé) and matter (hilé) and all beings have morphé-form and hilé-matter, but in-formation depends on thinking, it depends on the availability to the act of thinking and not just the repetition, here we find this second topic, that repeating does not just mean becoming redundant, the civilizing problem remains if we do not move forward.
In a lecture in 2016, at the UFRGS Hall of Acts (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) Sloterdijk already sentenced: “I think the reality today is similar to how we were in 1915 – he commented, comparing the current panorama with a time in the last century when the First World War had just started and had not happened… ”, this situation only worsened, the pandemic could be a pause, but it was not..
Access to human existence in a new kind of record implies an articulation of meaning for Being and life, the path taken from Husserl to Heidegger, and then with Gadamer is what links hermeneutics to ontology, and in Gadamer the text is explicit. hermeneutic circle method.
It can be thus described by following Gadamer’s reasoning: it must not be degraded to a vicious circle, even if it is tolerated, in it it holds a positive possibility of originating knowledge, which, of course, will only be properly understood when interpretation understands its task first.
This constant first and last task remains that of not receiving beforehand, through a “happy idea” or through popular concepts, neither the previous position nor the previous vision, but in securing the scientific theme in the elaboration of these concepts. from the same thing. (GADAMER, 1998, p. 401).
Considering the method we return to the essential question of Being, which is the forgetting in Western philosophy of this concept from Plato to Nietzsche, and thus we have a metaphysics or its negation, both incompletely because such an essential concept has not been addressed.
It is the forgetting of being, which the philosopher diagnoses throughout the Western philosophical tradition, beginning with Plato and extending to Nietzsche. In his work “What is metaphysical” (written in 1929), Heidegger defines existence as follows: “The word existence means a way of being and, undoubtedly, of the being of that being that is open to the opening of being, in which lies while sustaining it.” (HEIDEGGER,1989, p.59).
Without this essential category discussion and thought are tied to the “being,” which Thomas Aquinas defines it thus: “From which it follows that the essence, by which a thing is called the ‘being,’ is not only form, nor only matter, but both, although in its own way only form is the cause of this being ”(Aquino, 2008, pp 10), in this ontological line there is no separation between Ent and Being, even in English the words can be the same (Being).
Thus we have beyond Being, its aggregate category of being, which is inseparable from it essential concept.
AQUINO, T. O Ente e a Essência, Universidade da Beira Interior. LusoSofia.Press, Covilhã, PT, 2008.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Que é metafísica? In: HEIDEGGER, Martin. Conferências e escritos filosóficos. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1989.
GADAMER, H.G. Verdade e Método: Traços fundamentais de uma hermenêutica filosófica. Tradução de Flávio Paulo Meurer. 2. ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1998.
Vaccines, anticipation and care
08
Feb
Vaccines are undoubtedly the greatest weapon in the
fight against Covid-19, but it is necessary to follow the scientific data worldwide, WHO itself certifies that only two vaccines had the data finalized Pfizer and AstraZeneca, being the stages of evaluation (Status of assesment) and date of anticipated decision, according to the WHO website (photo inside).
The others are promised for the middle of February and beginning of March, note that the decision is written in the WHO table is anticipated so that some side effects are appearing after the start of the vaccination, normally this was verified in the final tests.
It is not, therefore, fake-news like a lot of information circulating in the media, the evaluation process has been accelerated, which is clear on the WHO website itself, it is understandable in a way, but it is necessary to know that the process of falling in the curve of infection will take a long time to fall, official data show that the death toll is growing, and there are countries that are already collapsing.
Thus, care must be redoubled and we all need to be aware of this moment, which is now the peak of the pandemic and vacillations in the control of the pandemic only worsen the current stage.
The case of Portugal is iconic, even though the vaccination process has started and is at an even good pace, the contamination of Covid-19 reached very high levels in the country and demanded harsh government measures, and a certain panic in the health system that asked for help from European neighbors.
We cannot imagine that this is just their case and that we will not reach this chaos, if urgent measures are not taken, we will enter the same collapse that a good part of the country already seems to be going, the difficulties of taking hard measures are due to the the bad climate that politics installs in the country, impossible any kind of agreement or common sense at this level.
In the meantime, the people suffer and we hope for the progress of the vaccination stages, but it is good to observe the stage of the vaccines that are being offered and also to make efforts in the purchase of inputs.
Why an “epoch” is needed
05
Feb
Our whole way of looking at life is filtered by a worldview, a complex
of values, family, social and religious education in a broad sense, that is, we all have some belief, or else we would have the whole explanation of the world about the puzzles nature, man and life. The pandemic could have chaged this worldview.
This “cosmological” view always implies (not nearly) pre-conceptual values, that is, how we classify the world, things and social ways of developing life, this worldview was called by Heidegger Weltanstchauung, the word is important because every translation is inaccurate.
In the ontological aspect that Heidegger drank, there is the phenomenology of Husserl, his teacher, and for him this was “the description of what appears” or “science that has as objective or project that description”, and for him it is itself a concept of method, which Hans Georg Gadamer later developed in “Truth and Method”.
However many drank from Husserl’s phenomenology, each in his own way, Karl Jaspers, Emmauel Levinas, Edith Stein, Jean Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Martin Buber, Nicolai Hartmann, Hans Jonas, and the one who turned it into Hans-Georg Gadamer philosophy.
The open sense of Being in Heidegger extrapolates the socio-political, biological or anthropological fields (for this reason it is ontological, or proper to Being), and the concept of Dasein means to be launched in the world while “ente” are things in different ways, that is, everything we say, feel, understand, behave in the final analysis what we “are”.
If we enter this clearing, the Being is also the one who needs help, healing, listening, a word of acceptance as the Being of the Ent, that is, in his functions as an experience.
Even though biblical exegesis considers all analysis of the sending of Jesus’ disciples to the world closed, go around the world and proclaim the good news and heal the sick, this care for others (in the broad sense of the word “heal”) also means openness, “Epoch” and transcendence.
Go around the world as a new worldview.
Reinfection, care and vaccine
01
Feb
Current studies indicate that someone who has had covid may have
a new infection because of the virus mutation, in São Paulo there are already three confirmed variants (by the Adolfo Lutz Institute, of course many will not even be counted because it is necessary to have PCR tests), and there are suspected cases in Santa Catarina, Paraná, Acre and Mato Grosso do Sul, while the infection is growing and the vaccination campaign is still going slowly.
The variant of the virus called P1 has already been detected in eight countries, in addition to Brazil, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Faroe Islands. What worries most is that vaccines may not immunize this new variant, studies are still ongoing.
On January 17, a case of reinfection was detected in Manaus, the case was studied and had a scientific article published clarifying and giving data on reinfection by the new variant, it was a 29-year-old woman who had contracted Covid in March of 2020, on December 19 she returned to show symptoms and was diagnosed with the Covid 19 variant.
Care should be redoubled, however, not only are there authorities that neglect social isolation, but there are also contradictory attitudes, the government of São Paulo puts almost every state in the red phase, of greater gravity, but goes to court to take face-to-face classes in public schools already this month, initially lacking coherence in speech and action.
Brazil does not follow the identification, tracking, monitoring and isolation of Covid-19 infections and the alert is from the Brazilian scientists themselves, the Gisaid platform that monitors the virus in the world, has only 0.5% of published cases, studied in Brazil .
Vaccination started mainly with health professionals, it is necessary to clarify that care must be redoubled, since the area of infection is strongest, and that only after a certain degree of vaccination, which depends on the effectiveness of the vaccine, you can have some measure of flexibility, opening completely is far from happening.
Vaccine: Efficacy and Efficiency
25
Jan
The effectiveness of the vaccine basically depends on the action
that it can take on the virus in specific people and populations, as for the age, the physical type and the organic development of each person and certain comorbidities, diseases that collaborate with the infectious process.
The fact that a vaccine is 90% effective, for example, for it to be efficient, it would be necessary to vaccinate at least 56% of the population, where the development of the virus would be limited to contagion and infectious rates would drop until the end of the pandemic in a given period, and also the vaccination time is important and the availability of the vaccine for a percentage of the population dependent on its effectiveness depends on it.
The problem is that rich countries are having inputs to produce the vaccine, so they may be more likely to fight the pandemic, the poorer countries beyond this availability, which depends on the agility of governmental actions, need to have resources for purchasing inputs. to produce vaccines in their own country or buy vaccines.
There is a market dispute and also at the political level, WHO itself said that a moral problem could occur if the poorest countries have difficulties in obtaining the vaccine and / or the inputs to produce it.
The capacity of the hospital system and the organization of the health system is also an efficiency problem, Brazil has a good public organization in the SUS system, however there is an urgency for the state’s actions, the return of the disease to a critical phase was not so there is a big problem of efficiency in the response to the disease, the lack of oxygen in Manaus was this.
Finally, there is a cultural problem, which is the understanding that we have not yet emerged from Pandemic and any measure that favors the end of isolation is worrying and this has led to an exhaustion of the hospital’s capacity to respond to the new critical phase of Pandemic.
