As we await the vaccine to turn the tide in pandemic management—as the success of countries rolling out doses against infection gives us reason to hope—the urgent task before us is to reckon with the past year. We must remember what we lived through without surrendering to the temptation that everything will simply return as it was, and we must open our eyes to what we are still living. Many observers have made clear the importance of refusing to simply archive a year widely regarded as catastrophic, even as that impulse tempts us. The mirage of restart—especially economic recovery—risks suggesting we can erase the ugliness and pain we've endured, when instead we must process it. Among these voices, Amnesty International stands out as an observer of excellence in the fight against injustice and in the relentless effort to speak for those who cannot. Through its campaigns for the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the organization's spokesperson Riccardo Noury and journalist Luca Leone have edited a book worth reading carefully for Infinito Edizioni: The Forgotten: Those Who Did Not Restart After the Pandemic (2021). "If we truly speak of 'restarting as before,'" the book asks, "then it means this collective experience will have taught us nothing." Because such a restart would leave behind many themes and people who have suffered from the pandemic even more acutely and in multiple ways: a pandemic that has not only created a global crisis as a wholly unexpected event (in reality, entirely foreseeable) but above all has laid bare the many fragilities that already accompanied our lives and our communities before. The social fabric has revealed all its disparities and inequalities, showing itself still far from the vision of community we strive to build—one that guarantees the rights we regard as essential to the dignity of a civilization worthy of the name.
The book unfolds as a collective project, enlisting recognized experts and passionate advocates. The editors entrust them with describing the fragilities that emerged during this period. The subjects range from children and adolescents to the elderly; from students with disabilities and their parents to unaccompanied migrant minors; from people at risk of usury to exploited farmworkers; from the homeless and those in shanties to the incarcerated; from countless entertainment workers to those in the nonprofit sector. The list documents realities and experiences where the pandemic has merely made visible a weakness that already existed. These are conditions that received no benefit from the networks of family, friendship, social, and cultural protection; in some cases, these networks seem to have transformed into a web that only trapped. When the first phase of the pandemic struck, the rush meant many of these fragilities—including those of people with disabilities—were forgotten in initial relief measures, corrected only in later rounds of clarification. For many of them, even the end of the harshest lockdown could not mean "the long-awaited breath of fresh air," as Alessandro Forlani points out in the chapter on the difficulties faced by people with disabilities. Some could go out only with accompaniment; others living in group homes or institutions remained effectively confined to their houses or residences. Those who used day centers found most activities outside the home substantially reduced or completely blocked, with foreseeable consequences for the people themselves and their caregivers.
In many other situations, solitude has borne bitter fruit alongside anxiety and distress. All those conditions already marked by personal fragility or family dysfunction saw a rise in psychological disorders. In children and adolescents—as Chieffo and Moriconi of Rome's Gemelli Hospital note—greater psychological suffering emerged where there was insufficient emotional connection with family members due to reduced interaction within the home. The question of "home" itself is decidedly cross-cutting, as is the matter of employment, precarious or otherwise: both, in their absence or instability, have created situations of grave disadvantage that will need to be remedied. It is difficult to choose which of the groups investigated deserves more attention than others. None, evidently, should be passed over.
Reading through this report—whose pages sometimes move too quickly, too sparsely, in the style of an urgent indictment but at the cost of necessary complexity across its different themes—leaves one almost stunned by the weight of issues it raises, the injustices of which we risk becoming complicit. Amnesty's final recommendations on how to use the substantial investments promised through the Recovery Fund do little to reassure us that we will manage to give just answers. But at least they help us give flesh and blood to those who risk surviving—at best—as only a ghost.