Antonio Navalón
August is the month in which the great wars are cooked. World War I began after two shots fired in Sarajevo at the end of June, setting world history on fire, but revealing its true consequences and repercussions in August 1914. In World War II, it was all August when it became clear that Adolf Hitler knew well how to deal with the lack of consequences, the fears and the inaction on the part of what would later be called the group of the ‘Allies’, or also known as the part of the free or civilized world.
Years later, in the first days of August 1945, a new era of terror, fear and apocalypse began. On August 6 of that year, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber plane that received the name of Enola Gay became the first plane to drop an atomic bomb, which was named Little Boy, which fell on the Japanese city from Hiroshima. The cameras registered the fungus and the world registered the horror that remained for days, months and that seventy-five years later continues to be the greatest sign of terror and the proof of the destructive capacity that human beings can have when facing ones against the others.
The story goes that the first time Harry Truman was told about the Manhattan Project was shortly before his inauguration as president of the United States, and his response was one of astonishment, although he did not oppose the project started by his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. . Even before Roosevelt’s death, Truman was convinced that there was nothing more useless in the political history of the people than the figure of vice president of the United States of America. Of course, the only exception to the value of this position is that – as happened to him and a few others before and after – the president died while he was serving as vice president.
President Truman had two small pictures on his desk in the Oval Office, one of which contained the phrase “the ball stops here.” This phrase was the way in which Truman convinced himself that as the representative of the American Executive Power, no one, except him, had the responsibility for all the decisions made.
Being inaugurated as president on April 12, 1945, a few months later he had to experience the true meaning of the words that were on his desk by having to participate in the Trinity test, which took place on July 16 of that same year and which was the first test of a nuclear weapon made by the United States at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The objective seemed clear: to drop nuclear bombs on Japan in order to end the war and avoid the death of more soldiers on both sides. And it is that – following the orders of the emperor of the country of the rising sun, Michinomiya Hirohito – before the nuclear bombardment, in order not to surrender, the Japanese soldiers were willing to fight to the death.
Three days after Hiroshima, on August 9, the Fat Man bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, causing more than eighty thousand additional deaths out of the nearly one hundred and sixty-six thousand in the first nuclear strike. With these two experiences of the use of a nuclear weapon against a part of humanity they verified how far human destruction can go. All this happened in August, an August like this one in which, as at that time, we do not have any precedent that allows us to know how to act.
It is better to consider that, beyond the two million Soviet soldiers absolutely emboldened and fed as a testing ground for Nazi cruelty in the face of the utmost brutality; it was the mushrooms from the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that really allowed the arrival of the end of World War II.
More than seven decades later, Russia seeks to show that it is willing to do anything to become the great Russian mother again, by launching the first vaccine against Covid-19. This is another way of looking at the horror of human beings and what can happen when they are pitted against each other. I will explain myself, Sputnik V – which is the name of the first vaccine registered and launched by Russia in homage to when the Russians won the space battle against the United States by launching the first satellite – is a double-edged sword. Initially produced to free us from the yoke that this small and insignificant virus called SARS-CoV-2 – or better known as Covid-19 and that was born in Wuhan, China – has put us and made slaves of us all, the vaccine, like all weapon, it can be used in two ways. The first, to give us back all the freedoms that we lost more than five months ago, or, on the contrary, it can serve to establish the price of our slavery.
Winston Churchill said that “never in the field of human conflicts so many owed so much to so few”, referring to the pilots who died during World War II in combat against the Germans. Today, in the midst of this vaccine race, we have to forget about the multiple campaigns and struggles to be the pioneers or the best and focus on what really matters: the preservation of human life. Naturally, the considerations on the Russian vaccine are useful for the vaccine projects of the United States, China, England and for all, since it is necessary to be aware that in this time of world rearrangement – it does not matter what the tradition – when it comes to achieving hegemony, dominance, and saving its own at the expense of the contrary, no country is above another.
It is not yet proven, nor do we have twenty years ahead of us to know what it will cost to kill the virus, that is, how many of us will die before eradicating it. And the fact is that there are still crucial questions to be answered, such as: What will be the collateral consequences that this virus will cause in our health? When it is approved and circulated on the streets, how much will the vaccine cost, who will pay for it, or how will it be guaranteed to be delivered equally? Likewise, who will vouch for the result of a steamed medicine in front of a defeated world, hidden and without any weapon against a small and silent enemy? An enemy that has managed to enslave us, disarm us, and take over all our freedoms.
It is also necessary to answer whether it is legitimate to ask a country to momentarily forget its legitimate interests, as well as its enemies, and ask them if they are willing to put all their differences aside and save their lives. There are too many questions, and at the end of the day, as with nuclear power, new territory is opening up as modern slavery is being created, and new pending issues are forged. And it is that, beyond the economic outlay that it will entail, what will be its real price in lives and affectations the supposed vaccine that will give us back control over our lives?
If something is obvious, it is that you cannot live without the vaccine, just as you cannot survive without the use of a mask. It is a real outrage and a criminal act to become infected and infect others. The moment that the studies that argue that the neurological, pulmonary and cardiological damages for those who survived the virus begin to come to light, it is that we really begin to see what is the cost that this situation is causing.
In the midst of so much ignorance and without any element of proof, the question is: that enormous fungus that caused Covid-19 and that is superior to the one that occurred after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, will it really be counteracted with a vaccine that only a few have who can play to cure or kill us at their convenience?