Love cannot be bought, but the vaccine can

This article is published in number 4 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until January 26, 2021

One thing the pandemic has taught us, as if we didn’t already know, is that we are not all in the same boat, facing the same waves and winds in this sea of ​​despair. While the whole country is pissed off, humiliated by sacrifices and depressed by restrictions, there is another level out there. A higher level. It is a level of no fear and total indecency, where the rich, the famous take off for exotic vacations unbound by the rules and laws that nail everyone else in their homes and their bubbles of toil and trouble.

How can it be that innocent weekend hikers are questioned by the police for buying takeaway coffee while others can take refuge in their second homes, enjoy their holidays here and there or slip overseas, sunbathing and enjoying non-stop luxury , convincing themselves that they are Covid martyrs why do they have to settle for two ice cubes in their cocktails instead of three?

For the Christmas holidays, the famous lobster Neymar made 500-friends-500 happy by inviting them to a Brazilian resort to make the train and play the trumpets. A holiday, but also a dinner in a restaurant, now seems an unattainable dream for most of us, but Paul McCartney, the circus of the Kardashians and Beyoncè various and damaged seem to have taken root in Saint Barts, the Caribbean island of the Cresi . Following Murdoch’s example, a Californian offered $ 25,000 to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles for a dose of the vaccine.

With life locked up for viruses, where have those good at everything gone but only able to post photos with their buttocks blown up again, called influencers? Taylor Mega, Chiara Nasti and Giulia De Lellis stuck with masks and red-orange-yellow areas and flew to Dubai “for work” where they found Elisabetta Gregoraci, fresh veteran and fighter from the heaps of Big Brother Vip, already beached.

In order to still be able to travel around the world, come and go as you please in a moment of shit like this and fill Instagram with Stories where they discover thighs and buttocks and unglue in front and back, with curves and sways from speck, it takes a lot. Yes, it takes a nap on the stomach so high to have fun on the beach in Dubai, toasting the sunset: ‘Another piña colada, honey? Or do you want to take a swim in the ocean first? ‘

Now I don’t blame any of them. There will always be those who will be richer and luckier than you, while there will always be those who are poorer and less fortunate. However, little hands are itchy when it comes to reading that wealthy British members of Knightsbridge Circle – a £ 25,000-a-year private club – are flown on private jets to India, Dubai and Abu Dhabi to stay in luxury villas while getting double-hit. of the Pfizer vaccine, relaxing in a five-star rating before taking the second dose. And all this for around £ 40,000 each.

One wonders what the morality is of those who are happy to pay to board a private jet and fly to the other side of the world to skip the queue in India, a poor nation of 1.3 billion people, many of which live in ramshackle slums on the verge of survival.

After all, even in the former country of communism, in Warsaw, the vaccinations by VIPs have begun. The Beatles sing: «Money can’t buy me love». Love cannot be bought. The vaccine yes.

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