29 The Coronavirus Video Game

I belong to that reduced sector of the population who does not like video games. I find them repetitive and boring. My life goals do not include the extermination of others (even disagreeable others who might deserve this fate). Nor do I enjoy being annihilated by invading extraterrestrials, hideous monsters, or the walking dead.

Not being able to smoothly progress from one level to the next is also frustrating. It reminds me of the university system in Spain, where one spends one’s professional life rock-climbing up the steep academic wall in an effort to become full professor. Both in video games and Academia, the number of levels seems to go on forever.

To make things worse, video games have become increasingly difficult to understand and play. I say this from the perspective of someone who witnessed the birth of the first video games. When my oldest sons, the psychiatrist and the pilot, first began to play them, these games were still in their infancy.

My first (disagreeable) experience with video games was when my sons loaded a tennis game onto my first computer, irreversibly infected it, and caused half of my PhD dissertation to be gobbled up by demons in cyberspace. These evil beings spirited it away, and it was lost forever.

I was left with the choice of either murdering my children or writing it over again. Fortunately, I chose the latter (though it was a close call).

Something similar happened about five years later when the pilot loaded a helicopter simulation game onto my computer. When the inevitable occurred, his life was not seriously endangered because by then, I had learned to make back-up copies of my files. The computer was reformatted, the helicopter game was banished, and the pilot finally ended up flying cargo planes.

After that, I made my computer off-limits to everyone in the family, and put a circle of mousetraps around my desk. My children learned that my computer was not to be touched on pain of instant death. They thus had to find another vessel for their diabolical video games. After cheating death a few more times on my husband’s computer, they eventually grew up, and all problems ended.

My next video game experience occurred some years later when my grandchildren became computer literate. When I finally got back in touch with the video game world, I discovered that these games had evolved considerably and had become infinitely more complex. I made an effort to play them (because that is the job description of a grandmother), but failed miserably.

I am unable to compete with my eight-year-old grandson. Of course, he likes to play these games with me because he always wins. Unlike me, he is able to effortlessly commune with monsters from outer space, travel to other parallel worlds, and overcome an infinite number of obstacles to obtain a golden key, wizard certificate, or whatever. He is able to smoothly progress from one level to the next without batting an eyelash. I am not.

Perhaps I dislike videogames so much because I am hopeless at them.

However, now I have no choice. Yesterday, the Spanish government published their de-escalation plan. In doing so, they have immersed the entire population of Spain in a video game with four levels/phases. If things go well and we kill a sufficient number of monsters, each level will last about two weeks.

Nevertheless, in their usual bumbling way, the members of the government have designed a plan that is more confusing than informative.

For example, this particular video game has four levels, but the first level is Level 0. This means that Level 1 is actually Level 2. The game ends at the Level 3 (which is actually Level 4). This morning, I unsuccessfully tried to explain this to Mr. Neanderthal (my neighbor from across the hall), who is still ruminating on this issue.

Level 0 will begin on 4 May.

This level is fairly depressing since we will not be able to do much of anything except go for a one-hour walk and buy groceries. A few businesses will open, including beauty salons. However, since they are booked up now at least until October, it would be fruitless to go.

In any case, many will not open because they still have to adapt their locales to the new rules, and they haven’t had enough time to do this. If this phase goes well and if statistics do not soar, we will then progress to Level 1.

Level 1 is a slight improvement over Level 0. More small businesses will return to life. Also included are churches and outdoor terraces (30% occupation). A reduced number of hotels might also open though with certain restrictions. Athletes will be able to renew their training sessions.

Level 2 allows restaurants to reopen (30% occupation) though only table service will be offered. Primary schools will provide activities for those children who cannot stay at home because both parents work. In this phase, movies, auditoriums, and cultural spaces will re-open (30% occupation).

Level 3 is the last and most important level because beaches will reopen. In this phase, we will finally be able to travel outside of our province (though not outside of Spain). The use of masks will still be recommended in public spaces. A few restrictions will be lifted in order to resuscitate (national) tourism. If we successfully, get to this level, then the gateway will open to the “new normal”.

Nevertheless, this grand plan has various wrinkles that still need to be ironed out. The first is the lack of clarity in the instructions.

As master of the art of giving exams to up to 150 students, I know that however clearly one writes exam instructions, there will always be someone who asks a question, stupid or otherwise, about how to do the exam. It is even worse when the stupid question is not asked, and the student then proceeds to do the exam incorrectly. The length of the exam instructions, even clearly written ones, produces an exponential increase in the number of students who are unable to understand them.

The instructions regarding this grand plan are not clear. For example, professional surfers are able to train at Level 1, but beaches do not open until Level 3. Unless the government is talking about surfing the Internet, this is not going to work.

Moreover, at Level 2, schools will be open for children of six years and younger (when both parents work). However, what about children of seven and older? The only countries where children are self-sufficient at the age of seven are Burkina Faso and Bangladesh.

Finally, victory in this new government PlayStation will depend on whether we manage to kill a sufficient number of monsters (viruses) at one level to be able to progress to the next. That is the good news. The bad news is that if we are not successful at one level, we can also regress to the previous one or even return to Square One.

Yesterday there was a significant increase in the number of new cases as well as the number of deaths. No one knows how all of this will go. It is still a mystery.

28 The Challenge of Online Dating in Times of Coronavirus

Now that we are beginning to timidly de-escalate in Spain, we must think about the strange new world that will open up before us as we arrive at that nebulous state known as the “new normal”. Without any doubt, in the post-coronavirus world, there will be a significant number of activities that will require great ingenuity and imagination. One of them is online dating.

As everyone is aware, there are currently a number of online dating sites for meeting people of one’s same age, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, mindset, etc. Even before the Covid-19 tsunami, a lot of people, both young and old, used these applications to meet their significant (or non-significant) other.

My daughter (in her 30s) met her partner thanks to a dating app, and my sister (in her late 50s) also met her husband in that same way. Fortunately, neither of these men turned out to be an axe-murderer, and both couples are now living happily ever after.

Since Internet did not exist in prehistoric times, I have never engaged in this practice.  However, thanks to the mating rituals of close family members, I have been able to view first-hand the complex process of profile-creation, candidate selection, chatting, and eventual face-to-face meeting, which online dating entails. All of these phases can vary somewhat, depending on the age, interests, and goals of the people involved.

When my sister, the jazz musician, created her profile, she initially sliced five years off her age. She was able to get away with it because she looks younger than she is. She told me that if she had been truthful about her age, she would only have gotten suitors in wheel chairs and oxygen tanks. 

Her husband is five years younger than she is, and he has no complaints. When she finally revealed her true age to him, she did so in a very pleasurable context in which such revelations seem totally inconsequential. She also never prolonged the chatting phase because she quite rightly asserted that she had no time to lose. However, meeting people too soon, without a previous phase of chat-elimination, means that before Prince Charming finally comes along, one ends up kissing more than a few frogs.

In contrast, my daughter, the forensic doctor, had no need to misrepresent her age. During her Internet dating period, she was not in a hurry and would chat with each candidate for a fairly long period of time,. During the chat phase, the man had to pass a basic literacy test. 

This meant his messages had to be syntactically and semantically coherent. He also had to reflect his lexical competence (ability to accurately use words of three syllables or more without misspelling them). He was also expected to be courteous and be able to talk about current events with a reasonable level of intelligence and good humor. If he passed all of these tests, then a face-to-face meeting could be arranged to see if the real person corresponded to the online persona.

With the coronavirus confinement, dating sites have risen in importance because they are now the only totally safe way for people to get to know and meet each other. (Covid-19 has still not mutated sufficiently to affect a computer, much less the person operating it.) For this reason, more or more people are searching for their other half online. It is thus of paramount importance to know how to exhibit one’s charms and be as attractive as possible within the context of the “new normal”.

So if you are seeking a partner, you should thus be aware that, thanks to the coronavirus, modern canons of beauty have been irrevocably altered. If you wish to appear attractive in the post-Covid-19 era, it is necessary to adapt your profile accordingly.

First of all, never has the maxim “Cleanliness is next to godliness” been so important. Clean is definitely beautiful. In your profile photo, you should be well-groomed. For this purpose, you should wear an attractive surgical mask (a face shield is optional). PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) in the form of a white suit is not necessary since this would indicate a certain level of paranoia. However, your profile picture should be taken after you have showered.

As for your apparel, the best colors to wear are blue and white since they are symbolic of cleanliness. In fact, most brands of hand sanitizer use this same color combination.

Age is now less of a problem since the current focus is on health. If you have medical issues, you are now the ultimate ugly duckling. Personal information should include your latest blood test as a valid health indicator. If it also provides information saying that you are immune to Covid-19, your degree of attractiveness is boosted by various points.

Professional information should also be carefully weighed and analyzed before inserting it in your profile. An attractive profession is any work that can be done from home since that means that you will not lose your job during the next quarantine.

If you are a healthcare worker or a supermarket cashier, think carefully about revealing this information until the relationship has advanced considerably. You may be a hero at 8.00 PM each day, but the rest of the time, you are a social leper since everyone is afraid that you are contagious and a carrier of disease. 

If you absolutely must reveal your profession, it is preferable say that you are a drug dealer since this indicates a high level of financial solvency. Strictly speaking, it is not a lie because a doctor or nurse does deal out drugs to patients.

In the post-coronavirus world, the chatting phase is also affected. First of all, you should not be in a hurry to meet the other person. Before any face-to-face encounter, it is necessary to explore his/her views on things like social distancing (how near is too near?), normal body temperature (36.5ºC or 37ºC?), and cough frequency and intensity.

After a period of messaging, you can then morph into FaceTime. In this more visual phase, the health condition of the other person can be further explored since you can view them as they engage in workouts in front of the television. You can also see whether their apartment has a large balcony. These are all important aspects to consider in today’s world.

When a face-to-face encounter is finally planned, a set of rules of engagement should be established. The first meeting can be in a park during the one-hour time when it is possible to exercise or take a walk. 

Togetherness is defined as a distance of not less than two meters. Masks and gloves should be worn at all times. The mask can only be removed for a few seconds to assure mutual recognition. These outdoor walks may continue over an indefinite period of time.

The final level is the most difficult. It is when there is actual skin contact between the two participants. When both parties are finally convinced that the other is healthy, clean, non-infectious and, of course, sexually desirable to some degree, then it is possible to take the relation to the next level.

The first step is to surreptitiously meet in the apartment of one or the other, where masks and surgical gloves can be taken off. After a vigorous hand-washing session (preferably in separate basins), you can hold hands while talking. Subsequent steps depend on whether this first meeting goes well, and whether it generates any effects on your health or on the health of the other person.

There is a problem, of course, if you are in a great hurry to get the ball rolling, so to speak. This usually happens if you are in an agitated state because of an abnormally high level of hormonal activity, accompanied by a generous rush of dopamine. In this context, the only way for both parties to be completely safe is to use personal protective equipment. If additional guarantees are necessary, hazardous material (HazMat) suits can be worn.

Nevertheless, for this endeavor to be successful, each suit should be equipped with a strategic opening to facilitate the activities envisaged. At this point, it is important to bear in mind (even in the throes of passion) that hand sanitizer is only for hands, not for other appendages. (Alcohol irritates the skin in delicate areas.)  So, cleanliness can only be taken so far.  

In any case, this is something that each couple must figure out for themselves. It is one of the many challenges of the post-coronavirus era.

27 The Chickens Flew the Coop

On Sunday, the chickens escaped from their coop and were allowed to free range for a short while. The average social distancing practiced is reflected in the image above.

In Spain, children were allowed outside for a walk. Not surprisingly, many people also took advantage of this measure to get some fresh air with or without children. Couples jumped at the opportunity to go for a stroll, hoping that they would not be noticed by the police. Children played together with their friends, and there were even improvised soccer matches. Many people explored the forbidden territory beyond the one-kilometer radius from their homes.

The police fruitlessly used their megaphones to shout out dire warnings from helicopters. They did not want to fine parents in front of their children. However, given the general level of social disobedience, they have said that they would begin to impose harsh fines. This threat could be empty or real, but to actually carry it out, the police would probably have to deputize various balcony vigilantes. There are not enough officers to monitor so many people.

This first de-escalation measure is a sort of litmus test. The objective is to discover whether the coronavirus is still out there. The invisible enemy might still be around, lying low on sidewalks, and supermarket counters, or lurking on door knobs and elevator buttons. On the other hand, Covid-19 might have thrown in the towel and skulked back to Virusland. No one knows, not even doctors, much less, politicians. The laboratory experiment thus continues.

In any case, the Spanish government has announced that the statistics are going so well that next Saturday (2 May), adults will also be allowed outside to exercise. That will mark the de facto end of the quarantine because all the chickens will have finally escaped from the barnyard.

The original plan was to exclude the elderly from this measure since we are a species in danger of extinction. We are too feeble to exercise anyway, and if we did go out to jog, we would probably suffer a heart attack. 

Fortunately, the government has decided against this course of action because a grey-haired rebellion was brewing. Resistance groups were forming all over the country. Possible weapons included rolling pins, handbags, knitting needles, canes, and walkers with perhaps an umbrella attached as a bayonet.

As for myself, I was thinking about spraying my grey roots and putting on one of my daughter’s denim mini-skirts. Wearing a mask also covers wrinkles. Maybe in the eyes of a near-sighted policeman, I could pass for 59.  Now I will not be forced to carry out my plan because the over-60 set will not suffer age discrimination.

Later on in May, if de-escalation still has not blown up in the government’s face, small businesses, bars, restaurants, and even hairdressers will be given permission to come back to life.

Once the government opens Pandora’s Box and lets everyone walk the streets, the police will not have to worry so much about infringements of private citizens. It will be more a question of inspecting businesses to see if they have put up plastic shields and of making sure that they have not let too many customers in at once.

Everything here is going very quickly, perhaps too quickly, like a giant roll of toilet paper that picks up momentum as it rolls down the stairs.

In the same way as everyone else in this country with half a brain, I am also wondering what will happen. The de-escalation measures seem to be moving right along, but I am wary of so much success. It all seems too easy. Forty-five days ago, the country was infested by coronavirus; the intensive care wards were overflowing; and the coffins filled three ice-skating rinks in Madrid. Now, suddenly all is well.  The quarantine in China lasted three months, and we have not been confined even half that long. Is European Covid-19 a wimpier version of Chinese Covid-19?

A possible justification for our 40-day confinement period is its historical significance. In the 14^th century when the bubonic plague was raging through Europe, 40 days was regarded as the length of isolation time necessary to avoid contagion. This number is believed to have been derived from Hippocrates’ theories regarding acute illnesses.  Forty is also related to the Pythagorean theory of numbers, in which the number four has deep significance.  Furthermore, since 40 days was also the period that Jesus spent in the desert, it was believed to represent the time necessary for dissipating the pestilential miasma from bodies through the system of isolation, fumigation, and disinfection.

So, maybe 40 days (with a four-day supplement) makes sense because that was the method used in the 14^th century. It is true that the hospitals are now gradually emptying, and the army field hospitals are being dismantled. Everything seems to be returning to a new normal. However, there is the occasional dissonance in the government’s happy song and dance. Yesterday, President Sanchez asked all regions in Spain to double the number of intensive-care beds in their hospitals.

This sounds as though he is envisaging the possibility that this risky bet may not pay off. We can only hope that those extra beds are never needed.

26 Academic Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs survived on Earth for more than 150 million years during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods of the Mesozoic Era. Although there was more than one period of extinction, most scientists agree that an asteroid impact finally wiped out the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The impact probably kicked up so much dust that it blocked the sun, halted photosynthesis, and led to such a huge disruption in the food chain that everything that wasn't a scavenger or very small died. Contrary to what the Flintstones would have us believe, dinosaurs and humans never co-existed. In fact, humans did not appear on the scene until 65 million years later.

Nevertheless, a few genes must have survived in some obscure DNA broom closet because as the human race gradually became more civilized, human dinosaur clones began progressively springing up in academic institutions all over the world. My acquaintances in Spain include various academic dinosaurs, who teach in different universities throughout the country.

Up until now, the Spanish university system and many of its inhabitants have been tranquilly living in the hot steamy jungles of the Mesozoic Era, never thinking that the climate would change. Like their reptile counterparts, academic dinosaurs spend most of their time, hunting (for bibliography in the library), eating (in university cafeterias), or sleeping (hopefully not during classes). When they are not engaged in any of the previous activities, they communicate with each other.

 A parallel can be established between the communication systems used by Jurassic dinosaurs and Academic dinosaurs. The sounds emitted by both species include the following: hoots and hollers (academic conferences), cracking sounds (giving lectures with an overhead projector), dance and song (celebrating a successful PhD or tenure exam), and even symbolic love calls made with showy plumage (recruiting students for their research group).

However, no species is eternal. As previously mentioned, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the dinosaurs were finally wiped out by a meteorite. In the case of academic dinosaurs, over the years, their numbers have been gradually reduced by the computerization of the university as well as their refusal to evolve with the times. But, they are still not extinct.

Despite their lack of computer literacy, they have never felt threatened because they could always ask a colleague to help them out with computer-involved bureaucratic tasks, which are the most boring part of academic work. In classroom teaching, it was also possible for academic dinosaurs to ignore the computer and cling to their old ways. However, now they are in danger of extinction because the Covid-19 meteorite has suddenly arrived.

The work of teachers and professors at all education levels has been irrevocably transformed by the coronavirus. This is unfair because in no apocalyptic film, was anything ever mentioned about classes online. (It certainly was not an issue for Mel Gibson in Mad Max.) But now, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, it is an activity that haunts the daily life of a considerable sector of the population. From one day to the next, the government has expected all teachers and professors to suddenly become experts in online teaching.

This is something like expecting a cricketer to be good at baseball simply because both are games that involve a bat. That said, it is not impossible for players to adapt since both require skills that are essentially similar, but sufficiently distinct that a top player in one game would struggle (at least initially) to be effective in the other.

Like cricket and baseball, classroom teaching and virtual teaching are also similar in that both are teaching methods, though they have significant differences. Among other things, they differ in their respective teaching environments, type of student-teacher interaction, and how materials are programmed and evaluated.

For academic dinosaurs, one of the most challenging aspects of the brave new world of online teaching is the use of Zoom, the program most frequently used for teaching in virtual classrooms. For assignments, exercises, and exams, one must also be able to understand computer platforms, such as Moodle. Explaining teaching applications and platforms to dinosaurs is an almost impossible endeavor, something like explaining Physical Cosmology to a Flat Earther.

For an academic dinosaur, virtual teaching is limited to recording themselves as they read their lectures from their desk, and then having a friend post this recording somewhere in cyberspace where students can access it. A colleague of mine was upset that the university was closed because that made it impossible for him to record his classes in a real classroom (where he supposedly did his best reading). Such professors regard students as empty vessels, waiting to be filled with their pearls of their wisdom.

Just after the university notified us that all teaching in this semester would be online, another dinosaur acquaintance of mine, who has never used a computer in his life, decided that he could use his phone instead. He thus called each student and repeated the class to each one over the phone. The result was not a happy one, and he is now considering retirement.

Because of the coronavirus meteorite, still another Jurassic friend has been forced to buy a computer and to learn how to operate it. Her progress is very slow. By the time she finally learns enough to be able to use it for teaching purposes, the semester will have ended. These examples are just the tip of the academic iceberg.

However, this situation does not worry academic dinosaurs, far from it. They firmly believe that the Mesozoic era will last forever. They are convinced that this is only a spot of bad weather in the great ocean of Academia. The storm will soon be over, and then they will be able to return to their former life.

Unfortunately for them, this is not going to happen. Their world has gone forever. Even if the coronavirus magically disappears in the next few months, the university has woken up to the fact that academic staff and students can teach and learn in virtual environments. Online teaching also happens to be less expensive. Classes, meetings, PhD defenses, etc. can be held in cyberspace. Among other things, fewer real classrooms are necessary as well as staff to maintain them.

For the higher levels of university administration, it is a win-win-situation. For those of us who are digitally literate, online teaching has both advantages and disadvantages, but we can adapt and grow wings because that is what we have always done. In order to survive, some dinosaurs evolved from ground-dwelling bipedal theropods to small, winged flying birds. (The T-rex is the unlikely ancestor of the hummingbird.)

In contrast, academic dinosaurs, who refuse to acquire computer skills, are doomed because the Covid-19 meteorite has smashed their Jurassic world to smithereens. The fallout particles swirling around in the academic universe are microscopic pieces of overhead projectors, chalk blackboards, and paper textbooks. If academic dinosaurs wish to avoid extinction, they will have to learn to live in this brave new world.

25 Finding an Escape Valve

Tomorrow, in Spain confinement will begin to de-escalate. It is not that things are going marvelously well. The best that can be said is that things are not going as badly. The hospitals are emptier. My son is back to working as a psychiatrist. Now his hospital only has 150 coronavirus patients instead of over 500. Yesterday was the first day in almost three months that no patient there died of coronavirus.

The statistics are also more favorable because the government has found a new way of counting the deaths, based on reincarnation. People die but then they come back to life again, and continue to exist in some sort of parallel netherworld. There is thus a gap of about 14,000 deaths between government figures and reality. 

Perhaps we should be cautious and stay indoors a bit longer, but no one knows, not even the doctors. The coronavirus is still a mystery.

But we have had enough. We see countries around us relaxing restrictions, and we are envious. We also have the right to some fresh air. It is true that China had a longer quarantine period, but three months of confinement is too much to expect from Spaniards, who lack the self-discipline of the Orient. We would like to embrace some degree of normality again.

The government is aware that the natives are beginning to get restless, and does not want to become unpopular and lose votes. This is understandable. They are also tired of this mess, and of trying to find creative ways to transform bad news into good. They are aware that many families are having a rough time. Not only are families suffering from economic difficulties, but also having children at home all day is exhausting and wearing on the nerves. Steam is building up, and they have to find an escape valve.

When I was younger, I lived in Paris for five years. Our home was a 70-square-meter (750 square feet) apartment, and we had four small children: the psychiatrist, pilot, forensic doctor, and policeman. My husband and I slept in the living room. The psychiatrist and pilot slept in the bedroom. The crib of the forensic doctor was in the kitchen, and the policeman had his crib in the hallway.

Paris is a beautiful place, but its weather (compared to Spain) is improvable (to put it mildly). It seemed to be perpetually cold and rainy. In the winter, the sun set in the afternoon, and darkness descended on the Eiffel Tower. This was also confinement though of the intermittent variety.

On many weekends when we were obliged to remain cooped up at home because of the depressing weather, I was reminded of the poena cullei (Latin for ‘penalty of the sack’). This ancient Roman punishment consisted of being sewn up in a leather sack, with an assortment of live animals including a dog, snake, monkey, and rooster, and then being thrown into a body of water (in my case, it was the Seine). The fact that my children managed to survive past the age of nine is nothing short of miraculous.

So, I understand how prolonged confinement with small children can imperil one’s sanity. In all probability, the members of the government have been under great pressure from desperate parents to allow children to go outdoors. Since many of the ministers also have children, they are aware that children need to go outside. At the same time they are afraid of making a mistake and causing a spike in the numbers.

The decision to take this second baby step began with some confusion. The first proposal was to allow parents to take their children (under 12) on a walk to the bank, supermarket, or pharmacy. This declaration was met with the utter disbelief of the general public because all of these places are closed-in areas where children could get infected and also infect others.

Furthermore, all of us who have taken small children to the store know that the ‘supermarket challenge’ is worthy of being included in the Olympics. One must first decide who gets to sit in the seat of the shopping cart, who sits inside the shopping cart, who pushes the shopping cart, and who gets to pick out the items from the shelves. Tantrums may ensue when the cart stops moving when it is necessary to stand in line to buy fish or meat. Riots can also break out when lettuce and carrots are put in the cart instead of chocolate candy. Children must also be dissuaded from eating the items in the cart before they are paid for. Concisely put, a trip to the supermarket is not the same as going for a walk in the park.

Fortunately, the government rectified its proposal that same day, and has now issued a more reasonable directive. The final version was approved yesterday. Hopefully, it will work, despite its rather daunting list of regulations.

One parent can take up to three children (under the age of 14) for a single one-hour walk per day within a maximum radius of one kilometer from home. The children must maintain an interpersonal distance of two meters from everyone that they encounter, including their classmates whom they have not seen in over a month. (How do you convince a four-year-old not to say hello to a friend?) 

If there is a park close to their homes, they can walk there. However, playgrounds and recreational areas are off limits. Children cannot interact in any way with swings and slides. If there is no park nearby, the children are out of luck and must stroll on the sidewalk. Masks are recommended.

Although these regulations are reasonable (given the context), on Monday, when the show begins, it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. A great many odd situations will doubtlessly arise.

First of all, there are not a sufficient number of policemen in all of Spain (or in the EU) to enforce these rules. The government is asking families to be responsible for their own actions, and in many cases, they will be. However, there are always those who think that the laws do not apply to them, and will stay out for longer than an hour or go farther away than they are supposed to.

Police officers have enough on their hands with arresting criminals. Drug dealers also want to go outside. They have had their income reduced, and thus are renewing their activities. Their clientele, in various stages of addiction and withdrawal, are now demanding home delivery. Trying to stop such crimes is regarded by the police as more important than fining parents who stay over the one-hour time limit with their children or who take them on walks to a park that is outside the one-kilometer radius of their home.

With no one to control family walks, the balcony vigilantes (balconazis) will have their heyday. They will have to make a list of the people that they see walking down the street with children and get out their stopwatches to time how long they remain outside. The punishments meted out by these intrepid deputy sheriffs could include hurling insults at the offenders or emptying buckets of water onto their heads. In extreme cases, they might call the police.

So stay tuned for the next episode of this unfolding drama. The government has announced that if the numbers continue to behave, on 2 May, adults will be allowed to go outside to run and take walks. That is when the fun will really begin.

24 Texas in Times of Coronavirus

My family, friends and acquaintances in the USA cover most of the spectrum of the coronavirus belief system. The categories are roughly the following: (1) those who believe that the Covid-19 is a threat and should be taken seriously; (2) those who believe that Covid-19 could become a threat if people do not follow protocols; (3), those who believe that Covid-19 is bad but that a failed economy is worse; (4) those who believe that Covid-19 is not a threat and that it is fake news.

Very often, one’s beliefs depend on one’s immediate context. Covid-19 evidently exists for people who live in Brooklyn, New York, but maybe not so much, for those living in Fairbanks, Alaska. And for people in Turkmenistan, it does not exist at all. Everything depends on whether the number of deaths per million is 1063 or 12 or 0.

I know that this is true because my son, the cargo pilot, and his family moved to Texas last year. Thanks to living in Texas, he now belongs to the third category in the coronavirus belief system: the economists. If he still lived in Spain, he would probably think otherwise. To be fair, considering that Texas is about the size of Spain (with 482 deaths per million), it is a state that has not been particularly hard hit (21 deaths per million).  

My son, like most of his neighbors in Texas, thus worries more about the economy rather than about catching Covid-19. The philosophy seems to be that if Texas is all right, then the USA is all right. He is beginning to sound like a (decaffeinated) Republican. Nevertheless, my consolation is that he does not as yet pontificate about making America great again. Nor has he bought a gun or think that a person with coronavirus can be cured by injecting disinfectant into his lungs simply because the president said so.  There is still hope for him yet.

In any case, I rarely argue with my son about such things. Once he makes a decision, it is impossible to sway him from his course of action. He was born that way.

For example, when he was 12, he decided that he wanted to be a pilot. No child ever received less encouragement in his chosen career path. In Spain, if he had decided to study anything else, he would have had free college tuition (sigh). At 17, even after five years of intense discouragement), flying an airplane was still his goal, and so we paid for his studies. That is what parents do. He thus became a pilot, and then joined the Spanish Air Force, where flight hours are fortunately free.

At the age of 30, he had another epiphany. He decided that he wanted to marry a Russian girl. It did not matter that he knew no Russian girls, had never been to Russia, and spoke no Russian. He went to the Pushkin Institute in Madrid for six months, learned to speak Russian, and then traveled to Moscow about three times. The following year, he married his current wife. Against all odds, statistics, and predictions, both of them managed to successfully overcome the obstacles of intercultural marriage, and have been together now for ten years. She is a lovely girl, who cannot live without him, and who thinks that he is always right.

Last year, he had a third revelation. He decided to leave the Spanish Air Force, get a job in the USA, and move the whole family there. Surmounting all obstacles placed in his path by the USA government (and there were many), he was successful.  U.S. Immigration obviously had no idea whom they were up against. Yesterday, the green cards for his wife and two daughters finally arrived in the mail.

So, once his mind is made up, no force on Earth can change it. I am aware of this and thus merely try to understand his views. He enjoys living in Texas though he has observed that many of the inhabitants are somewhat crazy. (Since I have never been to Texas, I have no idea whether this is true.)  

Precisely for this reason, he thinks that mandatory confinement is not feasible. Since almost everyone has guns in Texas, people who lose their jobs or who cannot work, for whatever reason, would probably go insane, and start shooting others as well as themselves. In his opinion, this would be more dangerous than the coronavirus. He is thus happy about the governor’s decision to ease restrictions.

In all fairness, his opinion that the coronavirus is not a dire national emergency stems from videoconferences with the directors of his cargo airlines. Despite being an essential worker, he has not been flying much because car production at General Motors stopped in March. Instead of cars, GM has now been producing medical gear. His airline company reasonably believed that if they could no longer transport vehicles, they would transport medical equipment.

They then contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to negotiate a contract to transport medical equipment. To their astonishment, the FEMA replied that there was no need to transport medical equipment around the country. They said there was no health emergency because everything was “under control”. And if the FEMA (whose job it is is to manage emergencies), says that there is no emergency, there is not much left to say. So, game over.

Fortunately, the company then decided to get in touch with acquaintances in the Senate, who said exactly the opposite. (How many governments are there in Washington DC?) The senators finally admitted that an American Airlines plane with all passenger seats removed (even if airlines did need to be bailed out) would never have the same capacity as a real cargo plane with a hold where various automobiles can fit.

Buttons were pushed, and the senators then told them that, yes, there was indeed a health crisis, and that their services were needed. And presto…..just like that, all of a sudden, they got the contract.

This all means that in May, my son will be flying again. In doing so, he will be transporting medical equipment to combat Covid-19 (regardless of whether the health crisis is real or fake), and he will also be working to boost the economy. In the end, he will have the best of both worlds. As I said, he invariably accomplishes his goals.

23 The Beautiful Ones

In the 50s and 60s, John Calhoun, an American ethiologist, performed a series of experiments with rats, which described the collapse in behavior that can result from overcrowding. Even with unlimited access to food and water, the rats confined in these utopian conditions suffered from behavioral disorders and their social organization was severely disrupted. At the time, these experiments led to grim predictions about the future of humanity, and were regarded as evidence of what could happen in an overpopulated world. They were even the basis for science fiction movies such as Soylent Green.

There has always been a certain controversy among psychologists as to whether Calhoun’s results are applicable to humans. Now the quarantine imposed by the Covid-19 virus might very well provide at least a partial answer to this question.

In times of coronavirus, Spaniards are like rats in a vast laboratory experiment. Mandatory confinement in Spain means no outdoor exercise, no walks in the park, no car or bicycle rides and, of course, no golf or massages. Like Calhoun’s rodents, almost everyone has unlimited access to food and water, but the bad news is that because of the quarantine, many of us suffer from overcrowding in some form.

The type and degree of overcrowding not only depends on the number of people in the dwelling, but also on the level of interpersonal harmony between the occupants of the household. An example of physical overcrowding is when a family of 11 people occupies the same apartment. However, emotional overcrowding can also occur when the domestic space is inhabited by two people in a failed relationship.

In Calhoun’s experiments, various different behavioral disorders were observed in overcrowded rodents. Some female rats simply forgot about their babies and abandoned them. Many subordinate rats ended up becoming a vacant, huddled mass in the center of the pens. Other rats became violent and began attacking others for no apparent reason.

Not surprisingly, in times of coronavirus in Spain, after five weeks of confinement, some of these rat-like behaviors are beginning to surface. Although mothers here have not abandoned their children (despite the stress of having them at home all day) and the vacant huddled masses will doubtlessly emerge after confinement, there has been a dramatic upsurge in cases of domestic violence and spousal abuse.

Last night I talked to my daughter, who is a forensic doctor. She told me that as confinement lengthens, she is seeing more and more cases of domestic violence. This was not totally unexpected because every year over the Christmas holidays and summer vacation when families are together for an extended period of time, forensic doctors have a heavier workload. Enforced family togetherness can be a keg of dynamite with a short fuse.

My daughter had a case last week of a woman who jumped off her balcony to escape her husband who wanted to kill her. He blamed the episode on the stress produced by confinement. The fall damaged various vertebras, but she otherwise managed to survive and now wears a corset.  Her husband was immediately taken to prison. She was obliged to remain in the hospital until a safe place could be found for her to recuperate.

Before times of coronavirus, her husband probably spent a lot of his time working, drinking with his friends, or having a fling with an occasional lover. Meanwhile, his wife managed things at home as best she could. Things went more or less smoothly until they were forced to be together for an extended period of time. In a mandatory 24/7 relationship, the holes in a marriage become glaringly evident. Frustration simmers and may finally boil over into violence.

During the 5-week confinement in Spain, the national domestic violence hotline has received 1854 more calls than usual. There have been 83,000 police interventions. This is hardly coincidental. Confinement is triggering a latent tendency for violence that is now surfacing. Women are the ones that usually pay the consequences.

This violence, however, can take many forms. My daughter told me of another case of a man who had been found dead in his apartment after twelve days. She knew this because of the maggots in his eye sockets. As it turns out, he was married (though not very happily). Since he worked as a hospital janitor, he was constantly exposed to coronavirus. So this danger of contagion provided his wife with a God-sent excuse to go spend confinement with her sister instead of remaining at home with him. She packed her things, went out the door, and never looked back. Fifteen days later, the neighbors reported a foul odor coming from the apartment. The man had apparently died of a heart attack. His wife had not been in contact with him since her departure. Presumably, she will not go into mourning.

During the Covid-19 quarantine in China, marriages also fell apart. When confinement finally ended, divorces skyrocketed, many based on allegations of domestic abuse. Now civil affairs offices in China have been deluged with divorce filings. Couples who would normally have received an appointment within a week now have to wait a month. Broken marriages are the collateral damage of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, not all behavior disorders in the rodent world involved rupture and violence. In Calhoun’s experiment, there was an even more curious group of rats, known as “the beautiful ones”. Taking refuge in the few secluded spaces in the pen, these rats did not breed or fight or do much of anything. They spent the day eating, grooming, and sleeping. They were fat and their fur was always glossy. Living in this type of confinement made them lose their sense of identity and purpose with the world at large. Though spared the violence and conflict in the crowded areas, they made no contributions to rat society.

All of us have acquaintances that resemble this type of rat. Many media idols also seem to respond to this profile. Other candidates for membership in this select rat group are those who participate in protest marches because they cannot have a pedicure, get their nails done, or go to the spa. People that place such great importance on hair, nails, tattoos, etc. (grooming) and dining at their favorite restaurants (eating) are the human counterparts of the “beautiful ones” in Calhoun’s experiment.

But okay, perhaps this behavior is the smartest. In a dangerous world, maybe it is the best strategy for survival. Could this be the way to go? To know the answer to this question, we have only to look at what finally happened to the “beautiful ones” after their rat universe finally imploded.

When the danger was over, the “beautiful ones”, all of whom survived the experiment, were removed from the failed rat universe to see whether they could live more productive lives. They were then released into a new more normal rodent society, free of social strife. Surprisingly, these rats never emerged from their asocial haze. They refused to mate or even interact with their new (normal) peers, and eventually died of natural causes still encased in their own private soap bubble.

Draw your own conclusions.

22 Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

In order to truly understand an object, event, or phenomenon, one must to be able to mentally represent it in all of its dimensions. The more connections that a concept has to others, the more one knows about it. In the case of Covid-19, this means not only being able to define it as a virus, but also to establish its cause, results, possible agents, etc.  It should not be conceptualized as a selfie, but rather as a Cecil B. DeMille movie with a cast of thousands.

For this reason, people all over the world are so interested in discovering the past, present, and future of the coronavirus. This includes where it came from and what caused it to exist. It is part of the mental journey that must be taken in order to understand the virus better and to come to terms with it. This quest has led many to put on their thinking caps in an effort to find someone or something to blame for the pandemic.

Perhaps for this reason, this morning in the grocery line social club, the conversation focused once again on the coronavirus.  Lately, it seems to be the only thing that anyone ever talks about. The daily statistics in Spain were once again somewhat worse than those for the previous days, and so everyone was a little depressed.

Since last week I had predicted that the numbers of new cases (and deaths) would begin to rise, my friends in the grocery line now look on me as a kind of soothsayer. In all fairness, it was an easy prediction to make. When people return to work, there are more possible contexts for infection.

President Sánchez has publicly stated that there is still no date in sight when the country will return to normal (if indeed that ever occurs). He mentioned the vague possibility of a ‘new normal’ in late May, but no one has much faith in that either. According to a recent study in Australia, Spain has had the worst Covid-19 response of the 32 countries surveyed (the USA was 22nd on the list).  Nobody in the grocery store line disagreed with the results. Conversation then turned to how we had gotten to this point and what was the origin of this disaster. Everyone had a different opinion.

A man, who is an unemployed waiter, said that he was not sure, but he believed that the pandemic had been predicted by Nostradamus as well as by the calendar of the ancient Mayas. His daughter had also told him that the coronavirus and its effects had been foreseen in 2008 by a psychic in America. In a gloomy voice, he thought that we were doomed because the pandemic was an Act of God and nothing could have been done to avoid it.

 A lady, who works at the dry cleaners, disagreed and said that this was part of a huge master plan. She mysteriously took out her new cell phone and said that she planned on returning it. She had heard that 5G networks caused Covid-19 by weakening the immune system. Out of curiosity, I asked her how she knew this. She said that she had seen it on her son’s computer. Her mobile phone was dangerous, and thus had to be quickly disposed of. She darkly advised all of us to stay away from 5G towers. Fortunately, Granada does not as yet have one of these death machines.

The lady next to her said that she did not know about her mobile phone, but she now had a deep distrust of her wide-screen television because the Covid-19 pandemic had coincided with the release of a new series on Netflix that was very similar to what was currently happening. She had a vague feeling that these two events were connected in some significant way. Since she was the only one subscribed to Netflix, it was impossible for anyone else to weigh in on her opinion.

Other people took a more local view of the issue, and said that the virus had come from Madrid. Granada would have been in better shape if it had closed its borders in March to prevent Madrid residents from coming to the ski station in Granada when all of this had first begun. Fortunately, I was spared giving my opinion because the grocery line moved on, and we were allowed into the store.

When I returned from shopping, my primitive neighbor, Neanderthal Man, had his door open. Out of curiosity, I asked him where he and Mrs. Neanderthal thought the virus had come from. He said that it had arrived from space in a meteorite that had landed in China and somehow exploded. Apparently, the virus was inside the meteorite.

Thinking that this would be a promising plot for a science fiction movie, I asked him whether the meteorite had been sent by malevolent extraterrestrials. He admitted that he did not know, but he was sure that the NASA was investigating this possibility. In any case, he and his wife were protected against the coronavirus because they had had their flu and pneumonia shots. I wished them good health (and good luck).

My neighborhood is evidently a hotbed of coronavirus conspiracy theories, which blame inanimate objects, meteorites, and divine beings for the onset of the coronavirus. However, oddly enough, no one mentioned bioengineering, which seems to be the main theory used by various nations to hurl accusations at each other.

Most of this mud-slinging has been between the USA and China. The United States has made repeated accusations that the virus came from China, and was manufactured as a biological weapon at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. An alternate though related theory is that since impeachment did not work, the Democratic Party conspired with the Chinese government to use the coronavirus to get rid of President Trump. 

In whichever version, this theory is one of the most popular. According to a national survey, roughly one third of all Americans believe that the virus was created as a result of bioengineering.

The malicious design and creation of Covid-19 is a belief also entertained by the Chinese, who say that the virus was bioengineered in the USA. They claim that the outbreak actually started in America and was exported to China. It spread there because 300 athletes from the US military, who in October attended the 7th Military World Games in Wuhan, were previously infected with the virus.

Not surprisingly, Iran has also latched onto the idea that America is responsible for the pandemic and says that the coronavirus is part of an American plot to damage Iran’s culture and honor. In this same line, the Arab world accuses the USA of deliberately creating the virus to sell vaccines.

According to India, Covid-19 is a bioweapon that went rogue and has spiraled out of control, though they are a bit fuzzy on which nation is responsible for accidentally unleashing the virus.

The theory that the coronavirus was bioengineered is attractive because it allows people to blame their current misery on a human or a group of humans, who can thus be punished and made to suffer for their wrongdoing. It would be somewhat more difficult to demand retribution from a 5-G tower, a wide-screen television, or a natural process such as evolution.

No one wants to accept the fact that the bioengineering hypothesis is simply not true. According to findings recently published in Nature Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is the product of natural evolution.

The (boring) truth seems to be that the virus jumped into a human host from an animal, while going through a re-assortment of its genetic make-up that allowed it to acquire the properties to start a pandemic. Even so, the exact animal source will only be confirmed after many years of research. Since the jury is still out on the source of the SARS outbreak in 2003, the results will not be in tomorrow.

Real (not fake) science takes time.