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By Lucas Gutiérrez

Claudio María Domínguez calls himself a spiritual educator and life coach, and his work on these topics is widely disseminated. One of his platforms is the C5N channel, on the program 'Hacete Cargo' (Take Charge) , which airs Saturdays at midnight. There, on April 3rd, he referred to the COVID-19 virus as the "fucking bug," and a week later he released a song that sings about the coronavirus. He also stated that with the pandemic, "those who are meant to die are dying according to a logical biological process."

“Die, you whore,” “Isolate yourself, you whore,” “Go extinct, you whore,” chants a group of people while spraying themselves with mosquito repellent and improvising upbeat dance routines very much in line with the spiritual leader's message. He also appears dancing and celebrating.

It's not "whore", it's covid-19 and it's a pandemic  

Do you think "whore" is an insult, Claudio? This is coming from a huge, proud whore who isn't contagious and isn't the cause of a global pandemic. I could tell you that for me, the real insult is what you're doing by communicating in this irresponsible and stigmatizing way to everyone you reach.

Throughout history, "faggots" and other members of the LGBT+ community have been isolated, killed, and exterminated based on the prejudice that we spread everything from physical to moral viruses. Standing on millions of deaths, I'll tell you the obvious: they were wrong. Death has the name of a virus, a pandemic, and hateful social structures like homophobia, xenophobia, and more.

And you come along with endorphins and little dances to give a football chant anthem to a message that perpetuates the stigma and hatred towards "faggots." Many faggots have taken this insult and made it their identity. I, who lived for years punished by the cry of "FAGGOT," long ago reclaimed the insult and made it my banner. And now you're assigning it to a pandemic that is destroying lives literally, economically, and socio-emotionally. No, Claudio, faggots have nothing to do with this. This video doesn't give me endorphins.

What creature are you talking about?

Years ago, many distant years, so distant that it has circled the globe—and now we find ourselves again—HIV was called "the bug." In activism, you'll often hear it referred to as such, made visible, because this is another term we've reclaimed so that what is so unspeakable to others is neither silenced nor used to stigmatize us.

Talking about the virus to understand it—heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual, bisexual, and everything else that's been labeled. Talking about the virus to understand what happens when it's assigned to a particular population. Do you remember when they said HIV was only for "homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians"? Crazy, right? Well, here we are, and this song again links faggots and the virus. Why? Not to rethink ourselves or to understand how this new virus acts, but to isolate, exterminate, and kill the "faggot faggots."

The lyrics ask us to get serious. Of course, because it will always be what's perceived as macho, as manly, that will bring the solution. And what's the problem? The whore.

[READ ALSO: Why we need to stop comparing HIV and Coronavirus ]

The message spread virally, and many of your followers shared it. Some "comedians" who made one of the versions decided to take it down from their social media after understanding the connotation of the word "putón" (whore) in this context. That's appreciated. But it's worrying that society still can't grasp what it means to assign the adjective "putón" to a deadly virus like Covid-19. And that a cable channel would broadcast a program where such barbarities are uttered.

Claudio, while you promote acceptance and good vibes on your social media, I invite you to consider how the karma you talk so much about affects you when you call the coronavirus a "fucking bug" and insult LGBT+ people: a community already severely impacted by the coronavirus. If you want to share something, spread the word about all the campaigns being run to help trans and gender-diverse women who lack food and shelter. That would surely give us more of an endorphin rush than this song.