The Forgotten Ones Part II | Marcos Bosschart Martínez
Murals painted in the capital of Senegal, Dakar, to raise awareness about COVID-19, Delphine Buysse
At the start of the pandemic, all was chaos for the international community. Nobody knew anything about what Covid-19 was and the mortality rate it could have. Through time, step by step, we started to learn how this new virus works. Governments all around the world adapted their legislation and their measures to the changing situations. Once we achieved the common goal of developing a vaccine, a question began to surround minds; when we are going to live like we used to do before? Will “normality” ever return? In this article, I will try to explain the main points to focus on to approach those questions. For this, I am going to rescue the concept of “the forgotten ones” as a reference to the countries of the world that are not deemed as “developed” or known as what we call “the west”. Those that are often forgotten in most of the events that take place in our societies.
Hope is a word that is sometimes used without limits and from my perspective, it represents something that we only feel when there is no option other than faith. This pandemic has given us, such as animals, the sensation of being in real danger for the first time in several decades. That feeling applies mainly to the richest countries of the world because of one logical reason, the level of protection that the citizens of those countries have from their governments, and their privileged position in the global capitalist economy. The trauma has been bigger for those countries than for the ones that struggle every day with other kinds of issues that go far beyond viral diseases. Violence, war, and poverty are deliberately silenced pandemics that are covering the globe in those nations that are forgotten - the forgotten ones.
As of December 2021, Europe is the most vaccinated continent on the planet by percentage. Despite that data, life is not like we used to remember due to the new risks which have been discovered, such as the new variants. In an exercise of either stupidity or magic, the belief of living like it’s 2019 after getting vaccinated got trendy among us. We didn’t consider what could happen to the rest of the world and the direct impact that could have on ourselves. The pandemic will not cease until the disease becomes endemic. For that to happen, vaccinations must be administrated to a minimum of 70% of the planet’s population.
From that point, the wealthiest are assumed to have solidarity with the rest of the states, but that’s an effort that requires too much energy for some of the most powerful nations of the world. In a globalized international community, everything and everybody is connected. Europe and the United States can create bubbles of security between them, closing their borders from the rest of the nations. Interdependency makes that position no longer viable for everyone.
Africa, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Central, and Southeast Asia are necessary points for the correct development of the international economic system. This is because of their natural resources and labour hand. Having the world at mid-throttle means that the production is lower, and the prices are higher which impacts the style of life in the west. The conclusion of this is that vaccinations for the forgotten ones are deemed necessary only when the most powerful countries require it to get back to the status quo.
Willing to do something is not the same as achieving it. Poorer countries mean less infrastructure and expansion of government power among the territory. States like Libya or the ones within the Sahel (e.g. Chad, Mali, Niger) have no precise count of where their population resides or even how many of them exist. The inexistence of concrete data united with weak healthcare systems makes vaccination a challenge. Although with differences, that situation is seen in South America and some areas of Southeast Asia.
The most powerful nations will have to get prepared to live with the Covid-19 pandemic for at least the next two years. That’s an optimistic amount of time that is going to be required to fulfil the most ambitious solidary vaccination program that humanity must undertake since the final days of WWII.
It’s difficult to narrow down the blame for the current situation and the future variants that can appear. Mother nature is uncontrollable and day by day it´s a fact that needs fewer proofs to be demonstrated. The pandemic is the consequence of the interaction between humans and the planet. We are not invincible despite what we can often feel.
Systematic problems require systematic solutions in a world that works like a machine and that is not ordered equally. The consequences of the pandemic will mark future generations. The neoliberal way of understanding capitalism is reaching its last turns.
In conclusion, the forgotten ones, ironically, have become the main key for a door that leads to this so-called “normality”. Countries all around the world must be smart enough to concern themselves with building a world that is prepared to answer these new critical situations that surely will come with climate change and the globalized world.
A small revolution is sometimes necessary to avoid the mistakes of the past.
About Marcos
He/him
Marcos Bosschart Martínez is a 22-year-old student based in Sevilla la Nueva, Madrid, Spain. He has graduated in a degree in International Affairs from Universidad Complutense de Madrid with special interests in security and defence topics.
Twitter: Marc_Bosschart
