'Am I asymptomatic?', By Juan Legaz Palomares

All this madness has taken from us a series of words that belonged to certain areas little or nothing explored.

According to the dictionary of the RAE: "Asymptomatic is a term that is used in medicine to name something or someone who does not have symptoms of disease." In medicine, a condition is considered asymptomatic if the patient is a carrier of a disease or infection, but does not experience symptoms. The affected person can be infectious and spread the infection to others unnoticed.

On the other hand, during the coronavirus disease pandemic, asymptomatic people played an important role in the spread of this disease throughout the world, due to the ease of contagion, which made its containment difficult.

I like the term "Asymptomatic". All this madness has brought to light, in addition to many reminiscences of our caveman ancestors, a series of words that belonged to certain areas little or nothing explored. One of them is "Asymptomatic" to hang it, like the bell to the lepers of centuries ago, who are suspected of having the malefic virus, even if they do not have any symptoms, and also to those who, by reason or be, have been or had any chance of being with someone infected. Crazy, hey.

All my life I have believed that if I did not have a fever, or aches, or vomit, or my leg went down, it was because I was healthy, but now I find out that I am not. How healthy, healthy ... not even with the ass of a frog, that what I had was pure and hard "Asymptomatology".

And this, what do you want me to say ... well, despite the first "Tarambazo" that hits you, fills you with joy because I can extrapolate it to many other issues in life. Throughout my childhood I was led to believe that I was not very smart because my interest in numbers was as inversely proportional as my capacity for language, literature, morphological analysis, and poetry. I loved words, God, how I loved them and I love them! But I found mathematical calculations insufferable in a time when the “clever” were measured by the speed at which they solved multiplication or division.

Can you imagine the joy that I have now running through my body like lightning when I realize that I was never stupid, but asymptomatic of mathematics?

Just yesterday a friend told me that he would blow up all those irresponsible "asymptomatic" who have been working knowing that they could not only develop the disease, but that they were spreading it right and left. Let's see ... Of course what I'm going to tell you now is neither justification nor an understanding of your foolish attitude. -that they go, if not, to explain it to the family of the deceased by the contagion-It is just ... trying to position myself and place you from the vantage point of the possible reasoning that these individuals may have made.

We know that they are field workers, in very disadvantaged situations and perhaps in their magical thinking they have contemplated the idea that nothing happened to go to work, especially if they kept their mouths closed, because if they said so, everyone would run in terror to flee of them and they would send them away with boxes out of temper for their houses. Yes, then help comes, yes, we have the best and most wonderful health system, yes, everything would be fine, but ... who solves their problems in the short term?

From now on we will no longer be able to say that we run into rude hordes, but rather with asymptomatic education.

Ok, I accept that in addition to being asymptomatic of the disease, they are asymptomatic of empathy, responsibility and civility. And that, perhaps with that, they are forcing us to be of understanding and mercy. Which does not stop being a real misfortune for the human being where if something saves us it is love for the other.

In just a few months, our entire world, the one we knew, the one that provided us with a little security, has vanished. Probably, all this space of fictitious comfort was also asymptomatic of the devastating force that places us as little monsters capable of devastating the planet and, at the same time, of being destroyed in a matter of hours by it.

This being asymptomatic has a lot of fabric to cut. From now on we will no longer be able to say that we run into rude hordes, but rather with asymptomatic education.

You have to see ... who was going to say to me, when I used to play with words as a child, thinking that they were reserved for "Fools", that it was going to be the words and not the numbers that made me understand how hard it is to be asymptomatic in so many things in life.

Juan Legaz Palomares.