The Ebola virus has brought us suddenly back to the Milan in 1630, when the plague spread the psychosis that someone was scattering a yellowish substance (as Manzoni described) in places and on items, with which a person often came into contact with, such as doorknobs, in order to infect the inhabitants with the disease. The infector was someone who was suspected of being able to transmit the disease; a terrible prejudice has reigned today at a school in Fiumicino, near Rome, it has occorre to little girl of 3: Chanel.
The todler, in fact, had just returned from a holiday in Uganda with her mother and sister, she saw the nursery school doors sealed not by legislation nor by the Institute, but by the intransigence of other mothers, governed by an uncontrolled fear of contracting the virus owing to a widespread alarm that verges on racism.
“We have spent days of anguish – tells the father, Massimiliano in exclusive interview to In Terris, Yet there was no real reason to just imagine any risk; the only explanation is that we came from Africa. But Uganda has not been infected, and before leaving, just the day before, I had my my daughters do all the necessary analyses to determine their total state of health. Not only that, but my daughter, didn’t have any particular symptom, or a fever or a cold. What has happened is pure madness … “A slap to rationality, but also to humanity which should accompany every decision that affects such young children. Mothers have imposed a new law: either you, or the others; If Chanel was to enter into the room, the other children were to go out.
Morover: the web, in this case has complicated things, informing mothers on about 21 days of incubation of the disease, which was taken as a dogma to calculate when the child could have returned to nursery school. What happened a few days after thanks to the mediation of the headmistress Prof. Iannarelli, who had also guaranteed on behaf of the school, the possibilità of going back to the nursery, and whose presence had ensured the overcoming of the boycotting that had come to light.
The problem in this case is not bureaucratic, but cultural. The episode that took place speaks for itself: the psychological warfare that is spreading among the population, is a no less as dangerous as the virus of the disease. The rejection of the other, the geographical discrimination, is the first step towards a new form of racism: the healthy on the one hand and the sick on the other. True to say that precautions are necessary, but passing from having a fair concern towards practising discrimination is quick.
Without considering that the fear and ignorance of the people triggers an an unscrupulous business: there you are! On eBay, a series of protective clothing against any harmful material, including the Ebola virus, whose name ostentatiously appears in the caption of at least a hundred different models, with prices ranging from a basic dollar auction up to 2,500 for the more equipped versions. The section appeals to the so-called ‘survivalists’ . Those, who at home always have the backpack ready in the event of pandemics, nuclear explosions, all sorts of cataclysms, zombie, Apocalypses,and so on. The result is a loss of the sense of hospitality and the construction of cultural barricades, as in the case of Chanel.
Translation provided by Marina Stronati
