2023-04-29 04:10:00
The Aragonese epidemiologist Fernando Simón, director of the Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Center and one of the most iconic faces of the covid-19 pandemic in Spain, assured yesterday in Oviedo that Spanish society must “take advantage of this window that has opened with the health crisis to assess the importance of public health and guarantee that the next crisis can be better dealt with”, since “in this way the impact of the next pandemic to come -because there will continue to be pandemics- will be much less”.
“This window of vindication of public health, in addition, is going to end soon, and soon we will all say again that the most important thing is the economy,” warned the scientist. “If the economy doesn’t make you happy, why do we want it? What we want is to be healthy and happy,” he said.
The scientist made these statements during his speech to thank the gold insignia awarded by UGT at the XXVI edition of the “1st of May” awards. The award for Militancy and Dedication went to teacher Maite Cuevas González, a veteran trade unionist in the education sector; the insignia to the Base Union Work, to Isaac Javier Calleja Tuñón, metal worker and historical union representative in the old Ensidesa (today Arcelor), and the recognition of the UGT Union Section fell to the Gijón City Council, represented by José Fernando Alvarez Rodriguez and Monica Pereiras Garcia.
In his speech, the general secretary of the UGT at the national level, Pepe Álvarez from Asturias, pointed out that the winners “incarnate the values of the union and represent the best of the organization”. Specifically, Álvarez defended Simón from the “minority but virulent attacks that he suffered during the pandemic.” And he pointed out that his figure “represents the value of the public in a broad sense, not only in the field of health and research.” “For a long time Spain has not given toilets the value they deserve,” he reproached.
For his part, the general secretary of UGT Asturias, Javier Fernández Lanero, assured that “having an aging population is not a problem, but the result of a collective success of all to create a society with a longer life expectancy”. Likewise, he affirmed the demographic aging “is an opportunity to generate employment in a lot of services that older people can demand”, as well as “to attract more people to Asturias to spend their retirement”.
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