Dr Kristopher Lovell

“What barbarity! What ignorance! Can they even be called human? Do they deserve to use up the same air that we do during these hard moments for planet earth? Everybody would have food enough for two days, right, albeit pasta?” These pretty much sum up what some of my social media “friends” posted in reaction to the news of great numbers of people swarming the streets after the announcement of the weekend lockdown two hours before it was supposed to start. As you’ll recall, on the night of Friday, April 10, 2020, the interior minister had announced a weekend long lockdown, allowing his citizens two hours to get ready. Many people had spilled out into the streets looking to buy food, water, medicine and who knows what else. It was to this very event that my friends had reacted so strongly, questioning from our nomadic roots to lack of education, from our stupidity to our disrespectfulness of the many health workers who were jeopardizing their lives to help the sick. While they raged about the thousands on the street from their homes with their stocked-up cellars, they were overlooking one big issue: economics. Many working-class people get paid weekly and receive their salaries on Friday. Many working-class people do not have cellars to stock up. They have to wait until the weekend to do the grocery shopping for their home. I believe that the great majority of people whom we saw on the streets that night were them. So, who are we to pass judgement when it is us who cannot empathize, let alone sympathize?