Emad Daoud
Our winter no longer bears the scent of rain but is marked by death. Death is sold in closed Facebook groups where medical certificates are rented out like brothel rooms, and death is broadcasted on TikTok platforms where ignorance becomes a commodity sold at public auctions, treating us like nations acting as if health is a luxury rather than a basic right.
In the shadows, deals are struck: a doctor bargains with his conscience, a pharmacist signs away his soul, an investor trades in people's breaths. A medical name is bought cheaply to cover up an organized crime. But the greater crime happens in the open: millions of followers of celebrities who do not know the difference between a virus and bacteria spread recipes as they spread jokes. We now live in a world where a grocer is held accountable if he sells a rotten egg, but an "influencer" is not held accountable if they spread a deadly recipe.
China, with its cool mind, understood the equation: health is an existential war. Yet we still dance on the edge of the mortar. We prohibit non-specialists from opening clinics and then give them millions of followers to open a wider and more dangerous digital clinic. We demand the regulation of the medical profession but then leave the market of medical advice open to every intruder.
This is not a crisis of legislation, but a crisis of existence. We are a nation that sells its poor doctors and buys its costly ignorance. We are a people who receive death from both gateways: the door of a fake clinic licensed under the name of a renter, and the door of the smart screen that sells canned illusions.
The killer no longer carries a knife but holds a rented certificate or a fake account. And the victim no longer just loses their life but also loses faith in a homeland that was supposed to protect them!
The tragedy will not end with sermons or appeals. The tragedy ends when the medical certificate switches from being a commodity in the black market to a weapon in the sovereignty war. And it ends when the social media platform becomes like an operating room: only entered by those who are qualified and ready to account for every word.
We do not need more seminars, but a redefinition of the nation: a nation that does not sell its certifications, does not rent out its ignorance, and does not accept its citizens' health to be a market where opportunists and fraudsters trade
Nations do not perish in wars alone.. they die when the health of their citizens turns into commerce, and their minds into a playground. And this death is even more harsh.. because it is death with premeditation and surveillance!
