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Man… what a year!

Around this time last year (2019) I made a post doing a personal review of the year. Something I have been doing for many years now. This year in 2020 I want to do the same but… oh boy! what a year this was!

2020 is a year for the history. A year when the World stood still and begun a battle against a virus which has cost about 1.8 million lives (up today) and has shown up the great and bad of us. I am reading what I have just written and sounds like a science fiction novel or movie… but it is real. That is the feeling when something happens that will be marked in history.

I am not going to dive too much into this topic (we are overwhelmed already) but obviously this is the event that most impacted me this year (like everyone). The drama is too much to cope in any country; no matter colour, politics or approaches to fight against. Really no measure has been proven better than another and giving the same results: uncontrolled situation, race against the clock to try to fix things, surprisingly a lack of scientific view (this is the most concerning on my view) and lots of deaths.

What happened then? Well… I am not the best to tell; global leaders should stand forward already and answer this question. But humbly I think one of the main reasons I could see is that governments and health systems were not ready for something like this. At some point this year a lot of people were surprised by an old video that went viral where Bill Gates made a speech in a TED conference warning, with an eye-opening accuracy, that a global pandemic like this can happen very soon and almost no country had the minimum plans with tested measurements to safely overcome the situation. It was back on 2015 and that was just a clever conclusion from one of the best minds we have after lots of time researching, reading, consulting to high-end scientists and experts on the subject. That’s all. Not a super conspiracy to rule the world with George Soros and bla bla… The worst is that the World did not listen to him and others with similar conclusions…: “Science? yeah… great, but let’s talk about it later…”. Until things happens. When studies like this will be put in the front line of parliaments discussions? Until 2020 they were considered almost like miscellanea… And we must not forget the increase concern of astrophysics about the difficulty to detect on time middle and high risk meteorites that can impact Earth! Will we do the same ignoring it until the worst happens?

Time to move on… (I said I will not dive too much!). In 2020 I saw a society going through big changes and, guess what, adapting generally well. That is good news! It shows the enormous adaptation capacity that humans have and we can prevail through the toughest difficulties. I hope the people will realize this because it can be the first step to greater changes such global warming acknowledgment, more tolerant politics and laws and better society in general. Crisis like the one we are living now can be the trigger to better changes so we must take the opportunity.

For a more personal stuff, there is something that has surprised me on 2020. In the similar post of last year I talked about how I pushed forward my creativity. Two years ago was the creation of this blog, last year was to start experimenting with electronic music and this year I pushed myself to something I wanted to try for some time: become a streamer on Twitch and revamp my YouTube channel. I said surprised because I though that I was not made for it but… it turns out it is not that complex (after spending time to setup and I am still learning) and if you find your place to be confortable, anyone can do it. I have a lot of hopes on this new version of my creativity and I cannot wait to make great things on 2021 about this!

On the professional side, 2020 has been a complex one: we moved to work 100% from home since April (not very big deal as we are used to work remotely), we had the most complex issue we ever had to fix on our platform (my area) and we have pushed other areas of business. Overall we had multiples ups and downs, more than in previos years, but we manged to go through with good work and this is very valuable in these times… so kudos.

To finish, I would like to mention a couple of books that more have impacted me this year.

Yo confieso. 45 años de espía from Mikel Lejarza and Fernando Rueda. This book collects the memoirs of Mikel Lejarza (also know as “El Lobo”) written by Fernando Rueda, a well known Spanish writer expert in intelligence agencies and secret services. Mikel Lejarza is a living history of the battle against ETA in Spain. He was the man who, under Spanish secret service, undercovers inside ETA organization earlier on its beginnings and helped on the greatest operations against the terrorist band. In this book, “El Lobo” shares details about some of his missions, how was his live with the terrorists and the relations with the Spanish secret services. I knew some of his story but this book impacted me on the human side; how someone can leave ALL behind for a major purpose and still go through. Although with the high compromises for the rest of his life (still today he needs to remain anonymous).

Editando genes: recorta, pega y colorea: las maravillosas herramientas CRISPR from LLuís Montoliu. With this book I made a marvellous discovery: did you know that the CRISPR tools have a common source discovered by the Spanish microbiologist Francis Mojica? I did not! Him with his team discovered the mechanisms of how bacteria can replicate/copy DNA sequences and he named it CRISPR. Later this was the base to develop the famous and well known genome editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9. This book goes through Francis discovery back in 1993 and explain how this tool works in a very easy and divulgate way. Very recommended to read if you are interested on how CRISPR tools work and specially to know who is the person who named them and probably will be first Spanish Chemistry Nobel prize in the near future after 2020 Nobel prize was given to the CRISPR-Cas9 developers: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

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When the World stood still

“I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.”

Klaatu – From the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

It is been almost a month since I thought to write about the topic the whole World is talking about. I thought to write about what was going on and how it was developing. However I quickly realized this was something different to other recent crisis and I started to see how people, normal people, respond and behave to it. And this catched me.

I consider myself a curious and analytic person. Someone who prefer to listen rather than talk and I was amazed (still I am) about all of this so I was listening, reading, watching what people was saying and how goverments have reacted to control and fight this.

The title of this post is inspired by the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. A sci-fi classic which also happens to be a cult movie and one of the best of its kind (I totally recomend to watch it). The quote is taken from the same film and I believe it sumarizes very well what I saw in the last weeks while SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) spread thought the whole World becoming a pandemic.

And it is true that fear and panic are the real enemy in crisis like this. They drive people’s decitions to be irrational and people’s acts to be the wrong ones. This is one of the things I am seeing in many people (as individuals) and countries (as comunity).

Individuals

Things look very different when happens far away from our comfort zone. Western countries were almost convince that the epidemic in China would be contained and erradicated there; one more asian epidimic similar to the ones at the begining of this milenia like the first SARS or MERS. But the truth is that it quickly developed to a mass spread; so quickly that we barely realized.

People then get shocked when they feel the danger is knoking the door, their security gets compromised and their leaders don’t do anything to protected them. In this scenario, it is natural to feel fear leading to panic. And panic in a society makes people to be selfish, think on their own safety and survival. In essence, panic leads to the end of society. And we can see this when people start to do panic buying of essentials and food; even though this is irrational (suplies will still going through), people do it believing this is the right and safest thing to do.

Dis-information and fake news dramatically contributed to this scenario. In an era where we are all connected and the information is spreading even faster than a virus, false information can step in and influence people when they are more vulnerable.

Then comes the enforced measures needed to stop a pandemic like this. Those measures goes against the “engine” of a society which is social interaction; social contact, and this is something we are not used to. In some countries where this social isolation is enforced, I saw something similar to the Kübler-Ross stages of grief in people: first days of denial about what really is happening, then resignation and finally acceptance that these measures are key to stop the virus spread.

As today when I am writing this post, looks like most countries are struggling between resignation and acceptance. And seems the worst is yet to come within weeks or few months, so a big uncertenty is uppon us yet are we are still “learning”. But there is something we all need to have it clear: this will end, and sooner if we are smart.

Communities

During the pandemic I have seen different aproaches to tackle and fight the spreading in many countries. Funny enough only one seems to be working (at least up to this moment) but not all the countries seems to follow it. Why is that? Sadly the answer is the usual suspect: politics. In some countries seems that secure a re-election, the need to remain in the power and destroy the opposition come before anything else; even health. I know it is unbeleable (I still don’t believe it while I am writing), but it is true. These governments have reacted in a wrong way even knowing it (!!) and when the things got worst, they had not other choice than change the approach to the only one that is working…

In crisis is when you can see the real face of people and real intentions of leaders and governments. If there is something good from all of this, I believe it is that we have seen the real face of a lot of people, institutions, companies and governments. And when all of this ends (and it will) I hope we will not forget and make whaever is neccesary to change.

An underlying problem is developing along with the pandemic, and it is an accute global recession. To be honest, at the beginning I thought I would see more news talking about economy and more measures would be taken around it. I think we are living in a financial system that is highly unsustainable and in a society totally driven by rotten money, so I though governments would be reacting to economy first. Luckly seems it is not the case (at least one good thing) and health is being considered first as it should be.

Clearly 2020 will be a year to be remembered forever by our generation. Trully the World stays still. This is one crisis that have not been something similar since World War II where we are all being tested; as individuals, as society and as leaders. We are leading to an unprecedented uncertainty not knowing how we will be in just a couple of months. But there is something sure: we will overcome this together and this is the right time to really CHANGE the things that are not working. Be better, smarter, cautious with the environment and restructure the society to prioritize the health sector and science research over others.

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