Crisis overlap. The vaccine is expected the same as the cold water is expected in the heat of the summer. It will stop the virus, but what will do with the corruption, with political abstinence, with our traumatized psychological silence, with the mythology that has replaced the information.

Writen by: Artan Fuga 

All over the world, as well in Albania, the Covid-19 epidemic has shaken the pace of the normal life of the individual and their psychological state. But, as they say, an epidemic first is a social phenomenon and then an issue of the public healthcare.

 

The media worsened the experiencing of the consequences of infection with Covid-19. The invisible virus got aesthetically visualized, just like a candy, colored as something between sky blue and dark blue, represented as a beautiful pearl with its own beads, just like a coral from the depth of the ocean. The contrast between the visualized beauty and the danger that the virus represents for the health of the people, gives it a mystical dimension that at the same time it attracts the eye, but also produces dread. A beautiful dread, a dreadful beauty. A cocktail of a type that only the pagan gods have it.

 

Media are looking for clicks. The shocking article has much more audience than the calming one. This brought us to the situation that the information society, as we call it nowadays, became a society of folklore, mythology, delirium, a society of unverified “truths”. Everyone is allowed to speak beyond their professional competences on their specialization fields.

 

The psychological crisis was the third crisis that accompanied the virus in the public healthcare. The most unmediated relation in the world was severely shaken – namely, the relation between the soul and the body of the individual. Nobody is capable of feeling their own body without the interference of the others. Media and folklore of the social media did their own job. You will feel fatigue, you will have headaches, you will face a loss of taste and smell, perhaps you will vomit – all the symptoms that were turned into normality for those that their test results are positive! You do not feel them? Maybe you are already dead!

 

The crisis also included the political epidemic. The fourth severe crisis. The April elections are approaching, but the politics has found its legitimacy in Covid-19. So good that you came, Covid-19! With your macabre, mystical and cruel beauty, you gave us the opportunity to play this game on a political level. All the other issues of the Albanians were forgotten. What would have the political discourse had to say without the mystically visualized Covid-19? The beginning of the election campaign would have been boring! They should be talking about everything, without saying anything in particular!

 

The fifth crisis is the economic crisis, the one that was in stagnation already, but it existed. Now we have the crisis of the crisis. A package with the life-saving Faviran, on the box of which it says “sabah” (Turkish: morning) – three pills, “aksham” (Turkish: evening) – three pills, it costed 300 euros, then it became 250 euros, “the brother” from Kosovo can also bring it to you even for 75 euros. Sabah _ Aksham. Find Favira, like a female name from a Turkish soap opera. A palimpsest of crisis. Restoration of faith in our “Turkishness”, at the expense of “Occidentalism”. Please do not talk to me now about geopolitical crisis as well!!!

 

Favira!

Fakira!

Crisis overlap. The vaccine is expected the same as the cold water is expected in the heat of the summer. It will stop the virus, but what will do with the corruption, with political abstinence, with our traumatized psychological silence, with the mythology that has replaced the information.

 

Who will find us a vaccine against eternal wandering?

 

 

Artan Fuga, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Albania. He has different PhDs on philosophy, mass communication and social sciences from universities in Albania and France. Currently works as a Titular professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication at the University of Tirana.