💰 13,000 dead Spaniards, "over there"
(19/06/2020) How many thousands of dead citizens does it take for a government to stop counting them, or caring how many there really are?
(Original published: 19/06/2020)
43.945 dead, to take the INE figure. 43,945 lives cut short. 43,945 bereaving families. Perhaps fewer, if so many thousands died alone. 43,945 Spanish citizens have left us. 43,945 dreams, gone forever. The government updated its official death figure today, moving it all the way from 27,136 to…28,313. "It's true that in some cases, we still have those 13,000 dead over there", the national coronavirus spokesman, Fernando Simón, admitted during the press conferenece, "but we cannot place them now with the data we have". There. Thirteen thousand. In reality, between 43,945 and 28,313, there are 15,632 lives. Two thousand, six hundred and thirty-two did not even make into the thoughts of the national coronavirus spokesman.
The irregular or unexplained death of one single citizen should be enough reason to activate the machinery of state and of the law to investigate events, to provide adequate description of what happaned, to administer justice if need be, and to offer some consolation to relatives, because they need to know what happened to their brother, mum or granny. And that is what normally happens. In normal times, judges, prosecutors, police officers, lawyers, doctors and forensic examiners make that effort. The same effort, an even greater one perhaps, is made when there is a large accident or terrorist attack, which are then remembered and commemorated for years, often at the highest national level. And that is how it should be.
But now with coronavirus, after four months of a pandemic, we have reached the point at which a national spokesman gets the number of dead citizens the government has not wished to explain for several weeks wrong. They are "over there". Over there. A statistical problem, a complication in the national Excel sheet. There are 13,000 too many dead people for its narrative. They cannot place them. Neither have they offered an alternative story. What plausible explanation does the government of the Kingdom of Spain have for the 15,623 dead citizens that are not in the Health Ministry's .pdf?
If the government, as Illa and Simón argue, does not know the reason behind the extraordinary death of nearly 16,000 Spaniards over the past few weeks, what is the name of the unit that has been established to urgently uncover the mysterious cause? Who has the minister named to lead the task force? Which judges and prosecutors are they working with to solve the problem? What do the national laboratories say? How many forensic examiners and epidemiologists have been mobilised to clarify the situation? And if there is such a mysterious cause that has killed so many Spaniards in such a short time, without apparent explanation, why has the government decided to lift the state of alarm on Sunday? Why has the Prime Minister not told the media he wishes to speak urgently to the nation today to explain the new and uknown risk?
What would Simón and Illa say if they met the relatives of one of those 15,632 dead citizens in person? That mum, grandad or your brother are just "over there", and that they don't count for the government?
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