Περιμένοντας τους βαρβάρους και άλλα γούστα.

Συστημένο από τον Καβάφη στους προύχοντες

[Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians (1904): the citizens gather in the forum because the barbarians are due today; the senators sit idle and pass no laws, since the barbarians will do the legislating once they arrive.]

The prediction models fed with data riddled by sensationalism and other bias compelled us to prepare for a tsunami level wave of people requiring hospital care. Existing Hospitals were transformed, new hospitals were purpose-built and inaugurated by ‘consuls and praetors’.

‘Τα γούστα πλερώνονται’ παντού και πάντα.

The price for such an adjustment is high and crucially not just monetary. The mortality and morbidity from averting people with usual illnesses from hospitals is a pragmatic reality that we are only just starting to contemplate and face. The eye watering ‘bill’ inevitably has to be paid… but how much is it? The fiesta or fiasco isn’t over yet.

During the fervent preparation weeks leading to our complete stand still in terms of heart operations I frequently looked out of my office window towards the city centre. I was trying to visualise this tsunami level wave (this brutal barbarian endorsed by the experts) coming towards the hospital and engulfing everything. Now that we have ‘passed the peak’ we realise that the highest height of the waters in this city was a rather underwhelming ankle deep.

[The poem ends in bewilderment: night falls, the barbarians have not come, and word arrives from the border that there are no barbarians any longer.]

We are now trying to surgically curve a path towards normality and that for us is performing heart operations to prolong people’s lives and/or improve their quality thereof. But people are afraid of coming to the media-painted ‘infested’ hospitals more than the heart surgery itself.

Και τώρα τι θα γενούμε χωρίς βαρβάρους, αυτοί οι άνθρωποι ήσαν μια κάποια λύσις.

The original post quoted an English translation of Cavafy’s poem; that translation is summarised here in square brackets. The closing line is Cavafy’s Greek original.