The fact that self-isolation multiplies the number of cases of bullying in social networks is already obvious to everyone. What is more obvious: in spite of everything - neither statistics nor the stories of doctors - people, including the most seemingly reasonable ones, go into a dull coronavirus-denial, repeating in every way the phrase “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees "(Translated into Russian in 2020 - it is better to die from the coronavirus, taking a walk in the park, than staying alive while sitting at home).
And we all reposted how in Europe in different countries at 20:00 they applaud doctors. With outrage, we repost messages about how hard it is for them, how officials are trying to make them responsible for the pandemic, about difficult working conditions, about the needs of hospitals.
And then you open social networks and see how one well-known publicist accuses an employee of the "unfriendly" media standards of her becoming a "typical Putin official with the appropriate rhetoric - to frighten, fine, escalate guilt." Only with this employee, her beloved son is now working with patients with coronavirus in a Moscow hospital, and his mother is experiencing a pandemic as a personal drama in many ways.
Or the other day there was a scandal in the circle of people completely private and alien to any policy. A friend of mine went as a volunteer to a hospital redesigned for coronavirus. Prior to that, he was more likely a COVID dissident and believed that "this is just the flu." After the first week of volunteering, a person began to publish posts about how people die before their eyes, how this virus destroys the lungs in a matter of hours, and much more. He posted one of the posts before the May holidays, publishing a photo of the hospital registration journal, where the bookmarks are written in red: “corpse”, “corpse”, “corpse”, “corpse” ... There was no personal data in the post. Just a clear demonstration of the fact that they really die from this virus. Within a few hours, the public recognized the man and several of his friends, working as volunteers in the same hospital, bought by Kremlin provocateurs, depriving people of the right to choose “live or die,” pathetic little people measuring the temperature of patients and justifying the “digital collar” and total control , hysterics, and even ... accomplices in the murders of people who are now being denied planned hospitalization due to the re-profiling of hospitals for coronavirus.
In the comments under the posts of parents of doctors who urge people to be careful, hell and even the wishes of death for their children reign.
From a doctor or volunteer, well-meaning citizens need only one thing: to recognize themselves as a victim. Write about the nasty things that happen to them. Ideally, recognize publicly that quarantine measures do not work. Doctors or volunteers have to give a hint that there is no conspiracy on chiping and total control, but they are really dying from this disease, instead of applause in Russia, they get a daily bucket of slops and accusations of cooperation with the "bloody regime."
Doctors and volunteers do not have time to sort through all the comments. But it’s not negative reposts that upset them, but real human deaths.
But here I, for one, am simply ashamed. Very ashamed of my own fellow citizens. Let them believe in chips, let them believe that access control will now remain in the Russian Federation forever, even let them believe in “just flu.” In the end, everyone has their own psychological defense mechanism, their own media idols, who often do the same outright nonsense these days. Moreover, even after the removal of quarantine measures, obviously, no hairdresser will not return the lost human appearance.
But after ten years in a resort town in a restaurant at the next tables will be different people. As usual, they talk. They will begin to recall past days, telling stories from life.
“What did you do during the pandemic?”
“The first city. Resuscitation, we worked, I and my bride, and now my wife, Galina Alekseevna, ”a middle-aged representative man will dryly say. A lean, youthful lady will shine with glasses and put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. They remember everything, in all the details, but they don’t want to talk on such a warm June evening.
“Oh, and then we brought you lunches from our cafe! Remember? " - suddenly a man wedges himself in an expensive jacket at the next table.
“So they drove dinners from your cafe and us. We volunteered and fed the homeless at the Kursk station! - a woman with two children will respond at the next table, loudly demanding ice cream instead of soup. - And my husband went to dog shelters, drove food. So, through volunteer groups, and met. ”
“We in St. Petersburg also got it. But we helped to the best of our ability — just to buy elderly products for neighbors, to go to the pharmacy, ”as if the lady apologized at the table at the door.
“And we in Kursk have created a neighborhood aid community! As a result, everyone a little bit, and together they learned all the district old people by heart, ”a noisy company, annoying everyone a bit, offers to move the tables. Everyone agrees.
“Our mother in Vologda was seriously ill, we could not volunteer. We probably are not for you, ”the couple apologizes. But they are not listened to and seated in a common company.
And only one person is silent.
Because he remembered this doctor: he got old, yes, but the profile picture from social networks is recognizable.
Every evening, reading the reports of this doctor - then a very young guy - from duty, this man wrote nasty things to him. He called an alarmist, an accomplice in a global conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies and a corrupt satrap of a regime that wants to chip everyone. And from these nasty things he felt better.
The doctor did not answer him. Never. Therefore, it was convenient to write a portion of the new abuse: they say, look, how arrogant, even does not respond to comments, does not respect ordinary people.
Quarantine is over. But for some reason, this man forever fell out of love for a long time to look in the mirror.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.