14 Travel in Times of Coronavirus

Times of Coronavirus:
Life in Spain

This morning Google cheerfully reminded me to download maps for Helsinki. I had forgotten that in my pre-coronavirus life, I had been invited to Finland to give a conference talk tomorrow. My flight to Helsinki supposedly leaves today, but, of course, I will not be on it. Google was apparently unaware that my flight has been cancelled. Perhaps Alexa really is more intelligent.

When I made the reservation in January, I had worried that I had not left sufficient time between my return from Helsinki and my departure for Argentina, where I was supposed to give a ten-day seminar. Obviously, none of the above is going to happen. The conclusions that can be derived are the following: (1) Google is not all-knowing; (2) worrying is pointless.

Many years ago, when I was fixating on various job-related scenarios, which might or might not affect me in the next decade, my brother-in-law asked me why I was worrying so much. Had I so few worries in the present that I needed to journey into the future to search for more? He wisely pointed out that the worst things that occur are those that we never worried about because we never dreamed that they could happen. As it turned out, he was right.

Finland and Argentina will be postponed until next year, when travel will have returned to normal, hopefully. Now, in times of coronavirus, traveling is no longer on anyone’s agenda, even if Google continues to be the cheerful optimist. Borders have been closed for almost everyone, but especially for those countries hardest hit by the virus. Not surprisingly, plague-ridden Spain is on all of the blacklists.

Spaniards addicted to adventure travel have had to reduce their expectations and settle for expeditions to the supermarket or the drug store. They can also tempt fate by walking their dog to discover how far is too far though this option comes with a 600€ price tag. In certain towns, dogs can only be walked within a radius of 100 meters from one’s home. This regulation was passed when people started taking their dogs out for ten-kilometer hikes.

Those who really wish to live dangerously can try and drive to the beach in Motril or to the Sierra Nevada mountain range and hope that they are not detected by drones and stopped by the highway patrol. If they wish to be accompanied on this exciting adventure, their friend can ride in the trunk like in a spy movie. These are the most exciting travel options currently available.

The sudden cancellation of flights has also affected people who were working and studying, abroad as well as those on vacation. When the borders closed, many were unable to return home, and now are stranded in countries around the globe.

In Spain, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in charge of the repatriation of 30,000 Spaniards. About 9,000 are in other European countries, which is somewhat less of a problem. Getting from Dublin to Madrid is less difficult than returning there from Guayaquil or New Delhi. Spaniards are trapped in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

Foreign travel has always had its allure, and one might think that being forced to remain in another country for a lengthy period of time would be an exotic way to spend quarantine. And indeed that would be true if one had limitless funding and thus were able to pay for accommodation and food. Exotic sightseeing options for stranded travellers also include admiring the delights of the four walls of their hotel or hostel room for 24-hour periods.

Repatriation, however, is not simple because each country has its unique context and challenges. For example, in the Philippines, there are currently 250 stranded Spaniards. With his usual tact and diplomacy, President Duterte has warned the population that anyone flouting coronavirus lockdown measures would be shot on sight. Since a civilian was actually shot two days later by a policeman, the president was not joking.

The Spanish government has finally agreed to charter a plane to bring the marooned students, workers, and tourists back to their homeland. It is to be hoped that they will manage to get to the airport without being shot.

My nephew is also stranded in Japan, where he had been taking a course on some abstruse topic. His return ticket was for 3 April, but the plane never took off because all flights between Spain and Japan had been canceled by then. Now he is supposed to find a way to return home on his own. The Spanish embassy has told him that this is his problem, and that he should have thought about returning while there was still time.

The helpfulness of the Spanish embassy in each country depends on how many people are stranded there and how many tear-drenched videos, they send to the media. Apparently, the number of Spaniards stranded in Japan is small, and my nephew is not into making videos, though perhaps he will have to learn.

So far, the Japanese government has given him permission to stay in the country for one more month, during which he will doubtlessly learn some Japanese and cultivate a taste for sushi. At the moment, the only flight option is a plane from Tokyo to Dubai. However, after arriving at the Arab Emirates, he would probably have to find his way back to Spain by camel. He still does not know what he will do.

Though less frequently mentioned in the USA news, which has other priorities, there are about 50,000 Americans trapped in countries all over the world. In March, about 12 hours before everything shut down, the State Department sent out the following Level-4 warning, “Come home now or you might not be able to come home.” For Americans in remote areas of India or Peru, this was not an option. Even Americans in larger foreign cities had little or no time to change their plans.

Since I am registered at the American embassy in Spain, I also received those same messages. Even though they do not affect me, I still read them out of curiosity. For that reason, I know that the first message arrived too late to do any good (at least for the non-clairvoyant). The shutdown happened too quickly. The messages that followed basically said the same thing “get out as soon as you can and don’t expect us to help you in any way”. They also added that Americans should not expect the government to find lodging for them or organize repatriation.

Still, various parallel universes can exist in the same world. Whereas many news sources, (supported by the testimony of desperate citizens in countries from Paraguay to Pakistan), claim that the USA is doing absolutely nothing to help them, the State Department says that they are working around the clock to bring Americans home as quickly as possible. They claim that they have successfully repatriated 9000 Americans and are doing as much as they can. Whether this is actually true, it is impossible to say.

In all likelihood, those who knew which buttons to press, harassed their congressmen or had connections with the media were among the hypothetically lucky, who were able to get back to America. Others who probably managed to return home were those able to spend 3000 euros on a one-way plane ticket. Not everyone was so fortunate.

Evidently, the U.S. government did not realize that there would be a problem until it was too late, which lately is par for the course. In various interviews, U.S. officials and congressional aides paint a picture of a department that was caught off guard by the crisis—even following months of dire warnings from public health officials as the coronavirus spread. U.S. embassies quickly became overburdened with the influx of requests for help from American citizens. I bear witness to the ‘helpful’ messages sent by the U.S. embassy to Americans in Spain.

13 In Search of the Magic Bullet

As human beings, we are experts at cognition. Basic cognitive processes include perception sensation, attention, and memory, whereas higher-level processes are intelligence, thought, and language.

Our understanding of the world and the entities within it basically depends on our ability to successfully categorize what we perceive. In fact, a basic survival skill, honed by evolution, is our ability to identify, recognize, and successfully evaluate different objects in our personal universe.

We store these evaluations in conceptual categories, which are the Tupperware containers of our mind. The more Tupperware we have and the more organized it is, the greater our intelligence.

Certain members of our species, however, only have a limited number of containers. Nevertheless, they have defied Darwinian natural selection and thus still walk among us today. Such people are easily recognizable because of their tendency to make binary judgments.

In their world, all objects are categorized as good or bad, truth or lie, brilliant or stupid, etc. Since they can only envisage two possibilities, they have no way of accurately classifying those hapless objects that fall through the cracks and are neither of the two extremes available in the binary universe. Binary vision can only see black or white without any shades of grey. All of us know at least a few people with this type of mindset. Arguing with them is as difficult as describing a rainbow to the colorblind.

A few days ago, I had a Skype conversation with a binary person. She had read my posts, and told me that in her opinion, I was unduly pessimistic about the pandemic. She confided to me that even though I seemed to be unaware of it, the coronavirus war was all but won…. and that I should not worry.

The US government, like the 7th Cavalry, had once again come to the rescue, though I had evidently not heard the bugle call sounding in the distance. Once again, the USA would save the world. (She is American, and you can guess whom she voted for in the previous election.)

According to her, the malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are the magic bullet that would be used to ultimately vanquish the enemy. Over the computer screen, my facial expression must have mirrored a significant level of disbelief because she was quick to take offense.

Disagreeing with a binary person is a cardinal sin because in their binary universe, they are always right, and you are always wrong. She was upset that I did not share her perceptions, and our conversation did not end on a happy note.

Still, after the call had finished, I decided that maybe I should take a closer look and give her view a fair chance. I thus decided to ask my eldest son, who is currently working 24-hour shifts in intensive care in Madrid.

By now he has treated a lot of patients. Although many of them have recovered, he has also seen a lot of them die. So, I figured that he must have first-hand knowledge of which medications work and which do not.

I asked him whether, in his hospital, they were using malaria drugs as part of the coronavirus treatment protocol, and if so, whether these drugs were successful. His answer only confirmed my deep-seated belief in shades of grey.

In Spain, various drugs are currently being used to treat coronavirus patients. The medication administered depends on the stage of the disease, age, and health status of the patient, as well as on the availability of the drugs.

In the beginning, when the pandemic was on the upsurge and the country was taken by surprise, there was not sufficient medication available for everyone. In those dark days (i.e. a week ago), incoming patients had to wait in reclining chairs in the emergency room until someone died in order for them to be hospitalized.

The lack of medicine meant that doctors were obliged to choose who was “worthiest” In other words, they had to choose who had the best chance of benefiting from the drugs available. Now things have improved somewhat. My son told me that yesterday, there was one empty bed in intensive care, and that there was now sufficient medication for everyone who needed it

However, treating a coronavirus patient is not simple. One plus one does not always equal two. Quite often, one plus one equals three, five, or thirteen. In Spain, the coronavirus treatment protocol includes the use of malaria drugs, which sometimes (though not always) work, especially in the initial phases of the disease and when the patient is otherwise healthy without a medical history of other pathologies.

However caution is necessary because both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine often cause very serious side effects such as abnormal heart rhythms. Since this type of heart problem can be fatal in certain patients, doctors have to be careful since the ‘magic bullet’ can kill the patient as well as the disease.

In those cases in which malaria drugs are not effective (and this is not a rare occurrence), doctors try antiretroviral drugs such as those administered for HIV or herpes, or antiviral drugs for the flu. There is also biological medication, which usually does not work at all. In the final phase, when patients start choking to death, corticoids and anti-coagulants are used.

It is a guessing game, which makes it extremely difficult to know what drug will be effective for whom and in which context.

As it turns out, there are no black and white or hard and fast rules to apply because each patient is a world unto himself. In the final analysis, everything mostly depends on the strength of the patient’s immune system. There are patients of 97 who recover and others of 44, who do not. In the great coronavirus lottery, even if you buy only one ticket instead of 164, your number could still come up.

My son told me that this situation reminded him of when he graduated from medical school 20 years ago. His first job was as a general practitioner at a large Spanish military base. Because of his lack of experience, he would sometimes incorrectly diagnose a patient and prescribe the wrong medicine.

Miraculously, there were never any negative consequences. Since the patients were all young, strong, and physically fit, they got well anyway, regardless of what was prescribed. With the coronavirus, the possibility of recovery also seems to depend more on the patient than on the medication received.

So, the magic coronavirus bullet, if indeed it exists, is still to be discovered. The categorization of coronavirus medicine is thus not a question of black and white. It can only be understood if one’s mind has various Tupperware containers, not only two. The position of malaria drugs appears to lie somewhere in-between the Tupperware container for totally effective medication (which is empty) and the container for totally useless medication (which is overflowing).

As mentioned in a previous post, useless medication not only includes volcanic ash, bleach-like solutions, and colloidal silver. It also includes antibiotics, which only work on bacteria, not on viruses. And one need not be Dr. House to know that the coronavirus, despite recent affirmations to the contrary, is a virus (as its name indicates) not a bacteria.

Malaria drugs as coronavirus medication thus belong in Tupperware that is neither black nor white. Let’s color it grey.

12 Noah's Ark

According to the Book of Genesis, a 500-year-old senior citizen named Noah was tipped off by God that there would be a world-engulfing flood. According to the Bible, this was because Noah was the most righteous man of his generation.

Nevertheless, that was not much of a compliment since humans back then (not to mention the slick-talking snakes) were so sinful, violent, and corrupt that God got fed up with his initial creation. (No one, not even God, gets it right the first time.) He thus decided to do a “restart system”, kill everyone off, and then try to do a better job.

Noah was thus directed to build an ark in which he and his family, together with male and female specimens of all living creatures, would be saved. The ark was doubtlessly the most ambitious piece of technology ever created by a human in ancient times, and the Book of Genesis describes its dimensions as well as the materials used in surprising detail.

In fact, full-scale models of the ark, based on the biblical blueprint, can be found in Dordrecht, Netherlands and in a creationist theme park in Grant County, Kentucky. All of us know the story of Noah and how it eventually played out.

In an effort to copy Noah and even improve on his initiative, the Spanish government also plans to build not only one ark, but several. These arcas de Noé [Noah’s arks] will be in the shape of hotels. Their purpose will be to isolate people who have coronavirus but who do not have any symptoms. Their isolation will prevent them from infecting the rest of the population.

Consequently, all of the large cities in each province in Spain have been told to find a hotel, which will be reconverted into an ark. (In Granada, Noah’s ark will take the form of a circle-shaped four-star hotel, quite near my apartment building.)

This is further evidence that conceptual metaphors are a powerful means of communication. Only a few words are needed to set the scene and activate a ready-made scenario in the minds of listeners. This scenario comes with a previously installed cast of main actors, roles, actions, outcomes, values, and assumptions. The listener thus subconsciously makes the following correspondences.

The coronavirus is evidently the global flood, which is now spreading throughout the world. The Spanish government (Noah) has the ear of God (unspecified superpower), and thanks to government action (building an ark), righteous specimens of humanity (that’s us), who deserve to live, will be saved from extinction. This is advertising at its best.

Evidently, the effect would not have been quite the same if instead of ‘Noah’s ark’, the government had decided to call this type of hotel a ‘plague house’, which in past centuries was the designation for buildings used for forcible quarantine. Since few of the residents in these admittedly depressing structures ever emerged from them alive, the use of this term would have been a poor marketing strategy .

The government has thus made an excellent choice of metaphor since finally, after a period of ark claustrophobia (confinement), a certain number of people in the world (us) will be saved. The floodwaters (coronavirus) will recede, and life will return to normal, though it is to be hoped that the ark does not finally get stuck on top of a mountain. With a bit of luck, a rainbow might even come out, though I would not put any money on the appearance of a dove.

Another very attractive aspect of an ark is that it is a huge construction project. As such it is concrete evidence that after weeks of doing little or nothing, the government is at last taking positive action. The mission is to save the country in the face of impending disaster. It is unfortunate that the ark is not being built before the flood, but rather somewhat after the fact when the water is up to our waists ….but better late than never. At least our government (unlike others) has finally woken up to the fact that the flood is serious, and that it is not the result of an overflowing bathtub.

The projected arks of the Spanish government also have symbolic value because they indicate that at long last, the government has a PLAN, which involves more than just hoping that the virus will eventually disappear when the weather gets warmer. After the absence of effective planning in the initial stages of the coronavirus plague, it is reassuring to know that assertive action is at last being taken, which may save us. Hopefully, we will be more fortunate than the dinosaurs.

The result of this ark building might even be positive and make a rainbow appear. At the very least, this plan will certainly rescue a few hotel owners from economic ruin and provide employment for workers, who otherwise would have lost their jobs. Better yet, this same strategy worked in China, where it was first invented and implemented. In times of coronavirus, the Chinese also built arks to isolate the infected, and this helped Wuhan to emerge from lockdown. So, it seems like a plan worth trying.

I have friends who are immensely attracted to the idea of living in a hotel, where there is staff that bring you meals, do your laundry, and clean your room. One of them is a lawyer in Barcelona, who has a very domineering wife. Being quarantined with her is straining their already strained relationship. As a mercilessly henpecked husband, he views the possibility of residing in the hotel chosen to be Noah’s ark in Barcelona, as the gateway to Paradise. He says that he will be first in line when large-scale testing begins, and will fervently hope that he tests positive.

The only hitch to this grand plan is finding a way to massively test large sectors of the population. The viability and success of these modern arks depend on the existence and ubiquity of rapid testing kits and the logistics to efficiently carry out this testing. So far, neither exists. It is something that the government has not quite figured out yet, but they are working on it. Hope springs eternal.

P. S. By the way, for the unbelievers, the 15 days in Noah’s Ark would be at the expense of the National Health Service, courtesy of socialized medicine.

11 The Coronavirus Calendar

In Spain, a favorite conversation topic is the magic date when confinement will finally end. People are fed up with staying at home, and are looking forward to the day when they will be released from their imprisonment. We are all tired and would like to put a large X somewhere on our calendar. Initially, the official (though somewhat surrealistic) date was 26 April.

The members of the Spanish government, several of whom have had the lighter version of the coronavirus, are also well aware that the Spaniards are weary. The government is thus making great efforts to radiate hope and optimism so that the general populace will believe that quarantine will soon end. The stick is always more bearable when it is followed by reasonable assurance of a future carrot.

Furthermore, no political party wants to be unpopular, and winning the elections in times of coronavirus has been a poisoned apple. It is now infinitely more comfortable to be in the opposition because there is no lack of things that the government has done wrong, and thus there is much to criticize.

Unfortunately, the cabinet members, who find it difficult to agree on anything, even the seating arrangement in congress, also appear unable to agree on the exact day when confinement will end, or at least this is reflected in the mixed messages that they have been sending out.

A few days ago, the Minister of Finance appeared on television to inform us that after 26 April, we would be able to begin to return to our normal lives. For some of us, this statement was met with unmitigated incredulity and provided a much-needed moment of comic relief. For the more gullible (i.e. a significant percentage of the population living in the mental bubble-wrap that currently predominates in large sectors of the country and world), the Minister’s statement was met with ecstatic joy because at long last, there was a date when they would be able to get their lives back.

Nevertheless this joy was as short-lived as a consumptive mayfly. In a press conference the following day, the Minister of Transportation was forced to contradict the Minister of Finance. His words made it clear that this overly optimistic prediction was not going to happen in this world or in any other possible world.

When asked by (evil) reporters, who tend to focus on uncomfortable issues, whether confinement would really be over on 26 April, he hemmed and hawed, but finally admitted that there was currently no date when life would return to normal. My neighbor (with whom I occasionally talk from across the hallway) was understandably upset and vociferously criticized him and his relatives (both living and dead), calling them various unrepeatable names.

Evidently this was something that no one wished to believe, and this was made easier by the fact that the credibility of the Minister of Transportation was at a new low because recently he had been caught in a web of lies related to another issue.

Of course, this is hardly a great scandal because in Spain, politicians are not expected to be particularly truthful or honest. Indeed, everyone expects them to be deceitful, devious, and double-dealing. Those who are not defined by these default values are considered candidates for sainthood. In the many years that I have lived in Spain, I can only recall two politicians that were honest, and both are still spoken of in tones of reverence and awe.

Given the disbelief of the public, who secretly hoped that the Minister of Transport was lying once again, the government had to send in heavier artillery to burst the bubble of unfounded hope that they had mistakenly created. The Minister of Health then came to the rescue and solemnly reiterated that the magic date would not be 26 April. Any partial or total release from confinement would ultimately depend on the evolution of coronavirus infections and deaths.

Currently, our new plateau (formerly a peak) resembles the seismogram of an earthquake-sensitive region undergoing a sequence of light earth tremors. One day deaths are up, the next they are down, and then they go up again. These variations might be real or they might depend on who is doing the counting. No one knows.

Unfortunately, according to the latest statistics, Spain is not doing particularly well. We may have reached the peak, but we still have a long way to go before numbers are even remotely acceptable. The descent from Mount Everest is hardly the same as the descent from Bunker Hill.

Previous to the coronavirus, Spain was only world leader in number of organ donations and number of cloistered convents. Now we also lead the world in number of coronavirus deaths per million inhabitants (344), and people are worried and alarmed as well they should be.

In contrast, the USA now has 57 deaths per million. Compared to Spain, this is not so many. However, last week, in my fourth post, I also mentioned this figure for the USA, which was then at 22 deaths per million. Even those who failed math in high school can see that since last week, the figure has more than doubled. This probably does not seem so important because a large percentage of these deaths have occurred in New York, which is a far-off planet in a distant galaxy, light years away from Wyoming or Montana. So, no one really cares, but they should.

The bottom line is that everyone in Spain wants to have a date to look forward to. Everyone wants an excuse and an opportunity to celebrate, which is an activity that this country is particularly good at. Unfortunately, that will not happen any time in the near future.

Yesterday, Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, poured the definitive pitcher of cold water over the hopeful fervor of the bubble-wrapped people. He publicly stated in Congress that after 26 April, it would be necessary to prolong confinement into May. A survey is going to be made of 62,400 people in the next three weeks so the government can obtain more information. (Until now, they have been basically clueless.) However, according to a recent study by experts in epidemiology, who are the ones that really know something, there is little hope of returning to even a new normal until after 1 June at the earliest.

When the confinement first began in March, each of the members of my research group put five euros into a pot along with the date that each of us thought would mark the end of confinement. My guess (31 May) was the most pessimistic. However, even those who initially did not believe me have now acknowledged that I am the virtual winner.

So suddenly I have become rich, but with no place to spend my newly acquired fortune. I have told them that when all of this madness is over, I will use the money to invite them out for a real wine moment, and we will celebrate the simple joy of being together again.

10 Crime in Times of Coronavirus

In search of some good news last night, I called my youngest son, the policeman, who works in Madrid. I asked him if he was as overloaded with work as his older brother. He told me that thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a sharp drop in crime of 80%. Fortunately, not all coronavirus news is bad. One can only take so much gloom and doom.

As it turns out, quarantine and confinement also apply to thieves, swindlers, drug dealers, and other sundry crooks. Law-abiding citizens are not the only ones imprisoned at home. The houses and apartments of habitual criminals have also become their jail. Proof of this is that for fear of coronavirus infection, Spanish prisons are currently releasing certain inmates who have committed non-violent crimes so that they can be confined at home instead. Confinement is confinement.

At the Madrid airport where my son works, three of the terminals have been shut down. Air controllers have been furloughed. Airport shops are closed. Even though there are still a few planes flying in and out, Barajas is like ghost town. One of my son’s jobs is to patrol the terminal in plainclothes as though he were also a traveler and try to catch the suitcase snatchers, pickpockets, and various types of con artist that generally ply their trade there.

At the top of the hierarchy are the pickpockets, who regard themselves as aristocrats because their profession requires great skill, dexterity, and the sleight-of-hand of a magician. There used to be quite a few pickpockets in the airport. Many were Romanians, who made a good living because travelers always take money and credit cards with them. Since my son has been working there, he has come to recognize many of them and even know some by name because he has arrested them so frequently.

However, with three airport terminals closed, pickings are now much slimmer. Criminals are also feeling the economic crunch. Not surprisingly, the pickpockets have almost disappeared in the airport. The coronavirus has the effect of making so many things (even people) suddenly disappear.

Airport passengers (the few who can still travel) are now in less danger of having their money and baggage stolen. But where has the criminal elite of the airport gone? According to my son, the greener pastures are now the large supermarkets, which have become the new hotspots for crime because they are among the few places, apart from home, where people are still allowed to go.

Quite understandably, enterprising pickpockets, who have studied the market, have left the airport and migrated there in search of new victims. Nevertheless, the coronavirus has made the lives of everyone more difficult, and has not even spared the dishonest.

Thanks to the coronavirus, pickpockets and con artists in general must now address significant challenges and implement new strategies to achieve their goals.

First, they must plan their scope of action and choose their victim carefully, either inside the supermarket or outside in the line of people waiting to enter. Since everyone must stand two meters apart, both inside and outside, this means that the pickpocket must extract a wallet, purse, or credit card at quite a distance from the prospective victim. Simply having long arms is not sufficient for this purpose.

It is necessary to start up a conversation or fabricate an excuse that justifies accidental contact or less interpersonal distance, to propitiate a suitable context for extraction. Given the current level of social alarm, this is far from simple.

In the supermarket, it might be possible to accidentally brush against the victim in one of the aisles, but this would also cause apprehension. Closeness is no longer politically correct. Social distancing has made picking pockets so difficult that many of these non-violent criminals have had to recycle and invent new ways of stealing money from the gullible. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.

In one of these new scams, two medical professionals appear at the victim’s door dressed in gas masks, surgical gloves, and scrubs. Around their neck is an official badge of some sort, and they carry an insecticide sprayer, probably borrowed from the small farm of a relative. They show the person that answers the door a pseudo-legal document written in official gibberish that has a blurred official-looking stamp, probably fabricated with a wet sweet potato.

They solemnly inform the occupant/s that as part of a new campaign against the pandemic, they have been sent to disinfect all of the apartments in the building. However, during this operation, everyone in the apartment must remain in the hallway because the disinfectant can irritate eyes and nasal passages. In this way, they are allowed free access to the household and are able to take anything that looks even remotely valuable.

This scam has another variant that primarily targets the elderly. The fake doctors arrive at the door, and inform the occupants that science has recently discovered that all currency can be a focal point of infection. Therefore, it is necessary for them to test all the money in the house for possible contagion. Any infected currency must be confiscated. The gullible residents quickly run to get all of the money stored under the mattress and give it to the fake doctors.

The fake test consists of anything the scammers can devise, such as shining an ultraviolet light on the bills or or running them through a currency counting machine. Of course, the results show that a significant portion of the money is infected and thus has to be ‘confiscated’. They then give the owners a fake voucher for the confiscated bills and coins as well as the address of the fake office where they can supposedly recover the disinfected bills in ten days. The scammers then depart, usually a few hundred euros richer.

Nevertheless, these scams, though often successful, involve a certain level of risk. The victims may not be as dumb as they appear to be. They might have read about the scam in the newspaper or heard about it on the radio. They might call the police. And, of course, no one wants to go to jail in times of coronavirus. Social distancing is difficult in overcrowded cells, and the coronavirus has not spared either prison inmates or prison guards.

So con artists with some computer expertise, who wish to swindle more cautiously, now work from home. They set up websites that sell a wide variety of products that claim to detect, prevent, or even cure coronavirus. These take the form of test kits, vaccines, and medicines that are marketed as magic bullets, which are so effective that the medical world does not want people to know about them. Swindlers trade on desperation because many prospective victims are willing to go to great lengths and to considerable expense to purchase a small dose of hope.

The drugs marketed as coronavirus cures are also a scam and even less effective than the famous patent medicines of past centuries such as Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound or Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil. Still, in case anyone wishes to experiment, the following is a real snake (viper) oil recipe printed in Spain in 1719:

“Take 2 pounds of live snakes and 2 pounds 3 ounces of sesame oil. Cook slowly, covered in a glazed pot, until meat pulls away from bone. Strain and store. Uses: Cleans the skin, removes pimples, impetigo and other defects."

It would only be necessary to add “cures coronavirus” to the list of potential uses, and no snake in the world would be safe. Objectively speaking, consuming the snake oil in the above recipe is probably much safer than ingesting volcanic ash, bleach-like solutions, or colloidal silver, which are among the online cures for coronavirus currently available on Internet.

So, in times of coronavirus, people must implement new strategies. Darwinian survival depends on being able to adapt to meet new challenges, and work in new and unfamiliar environments. This means that people (both honest and dishonest) have to be able to be able to mutate. We must follow the example of the coronavirus and pray that we will be even half as successful.

09 Death in Times of Coronavirus

In Spain, death is generally avoided as a topic of conversation. Even mild gallows humor is frowned upon. People prefer not to talk about death and cautiously tiptoe around any term related to la muerte. It is as though if the Grim Reaper is mentioned, this will cause him to appear. Fortunately, the Spanish language has a variety of euphemisms that can be used to talk around death, and politely refer to it (loss, passing, departure, etc.).

However, death is ubiquitous and inevitable. And when it occurs, one must find a way to come to terms with it. For that purpose, the Spanish culture also has many rituals, which include the wake, mass, burial ceremony, and mourning. They are performed, more for the sake of the living than for the deceased. The dead really do not care how many wreaths were on their coffin. They do not agonize over who attended their funeral, how many rosaries were said in their honor, or whether their remains were interred in a niche or a mausoleum.

However, all of these simple rituals are important because they help the living come to terms with losing a loved one. They allow the family to mourn and finally to let go of the person who has died.

In Spain, three days ago the authorities solemnly informed us that we were on the road to recovery or at least on the long and winding road to a ‘new normal’. However, it seems that in times of coronavirus, such recovery is slow and sometimes may even be a mirage. Yesterday the daily statistics reflected a sharp rise in detected cases of coronavirus as well as a rise in deaths. This reflects something that everyone knows but that few acknowledge. Succinctly put, the government does not know how to count.

The coronavirus dead are legion, and the sheer numbers of dead have deprived families of the solace of familiar rituals and ceremonies. Coronavirus patients generally die alone in intensive care perhaps with a doctor or nurse to hold their hand if they are lucky. Their families are informed by phone. The body is tagged and then taken from the hospital. Since storage has become a problem, the body is delivered to one of the various improvised morgues in town.

These new (overbooked) morgues range from ice-skating rinks in Madrid to a large subterranean parking lot in Barcelona. The bodies are transported there with discretion and secrecy since the government wants to avoid somber pictures of convoys of coffin-loaded military trucks like those in the Italy.

Yesterday, the funeral parlor directors throughout Spain protested because the official numbers reported by the government do not coincide with the actual number of deaths. All over Spain, funeral parlors are working overtime. Although undertakers toil around the clock, they are unable to process all of the bodies that are piling up. It is little wonder that in the resulting chaos, many bodies have been misplaced, and the families are obliged to search for them by phone and computer. Because of the confinement, they cannot drive from one morgue to another seeking their deceased family member. One lady in Madrid had no idea where her father‘s body was until twelve days after his death.

So, people spend years paying insurance for funeral costs so that they will not be a burden to their family. Over time, the amount is enough to pay for 50 funerals as well as their own. So, at the very least, they deserve the one funeral that they have spent their life paying for.

However, in times of coronavirus, not only are coronavirus patients unaccompanied by their families in their final moments, the families are also deprived of the familiar rituals that will help them come to terms with their loss. There can be no wake, no funeral, and in many cases, no (permanent) burial.

The huge number of deaths has literally collapsed the justice system. Since it is no longer possible to incinerate anyone, the family is now offered the possibility of a temporary burial, and then a year or two later when hopefully things have calmed down, the body will be incinerated at no extra cost to the family. If you think about it, it is a real bargain since they will get two burials for the price of one.

This is only natural because in the last month, there have been over 10,000 more deaths than usual. The majority of these are probably unreported coronavirus cases. In Madrid alone, there have been 4000 deaths in elderly care facilities, which have not been recorded as coronavirus because the people were found dead in the nursing home, and no autopsy was performed. Not counting these bodies as coronavirus deaths makes the statistics less alarming.

I have dear friends in the USA who have told me that I am exaggerating. I wish that I were, What they do not seem to realize is that the USA is also on the yellow brick road to Coronavirus Land. The only difference is that they are not as far along as Spain is. More people should be alarmed, and more should care.

In the USA, the majority of those infected live in the poorer sectors of large cities, where there is more overcrowding. Worse yet, those without health insurance and who do not qualify for Medicaid tend to stay away from hospitals as long as they can, thus heightening their risk of infecting others. The most powerful man in the U.S. government has systematically ignored warnings from experts that he himself appointed. The pandemic will not be solved by firing the World Health Organization.

In Spain, the government has made terrible mistakes, many of which I have mentioned in this post and earlier ones. Spain woke up late to reality, but at least the government has finally become aware of the seriousness of the disease and has implemented harsh measures, which all of us are currently suffering.

The brighter side of the dark coin is that Spain, with all its manifest imperfections, does have a national healthcare system, which, even under unbelievable strain, has not collapsed. Even in the extreme circumstances of the pandemic, good medical care has been provided as reflected in the high number of recovered patients. You can ask my eldest son.

Despite the huge expense of two or three weeks of hospital intensive care and recovery, no coronavirus patient or his/her family will go bankrupt simply because they had the misfortune to become ill.

This is made possible by socialized medicine, which certain of my acquaintances in the USA regard as a danger to the civilized world and a harbinger of Communism. Quite rightly, they point out that socialized medicine is not free, and I agree. It most certainly is not.

After 35 years working in Spain, the money subtracted from my salary each month has paid for all of my medical visits, two operations, and four childbirths, among other things. It has also helped to pay for the appendectomies, cancer treatments, kidney transplants, and hip replacements of total strangers.

I will never know whether these strangers were grateful for my contribution. I will never know whether they were “deserving” or if they were playing the system. But, frankly, I do not care. I only know that in times of coronavirus, it is good to have healthcare provided by a National Health System. In times of coronavirus, it is good to have socialized medicine.

08 Obligatory confinement

During his life, Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) was imprisoned twice because of his politics. Both of his confinements were periods of great literary creativity. His first imprisonment produced the immortal lines “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage”. If he had lived in times of coronavirus, he would surely have been an influencer.

In Spain, like Lovelace, we live in a state of confinement, which everyone deals with as best they can. Few apartments here have stonewalls, but there are certainly iron bars on the balconies as well as the window grills. So, the prison scenario of Lovelace’s creativity is partially replicated. Those with a certain type of job are able to work from their prison, but others who are not so fortunate have to find activities that can fill the empty hours of their enforced leisure time.

If a family has small children, however, they are simply out of luck. There is no school, daycare, or even a yard to play in, and the children must stay inside. It is necessary to find educational ways to amuse them throughout the day. Parents thus become professional entertainers, something like birthday-party clowns. The only problem is that instead of lasting for a few hours, the party goes on for considerably longer. At present, the ongoing party has lasted for over two weeks.

On the brighter side, confinement here has fomented imagination and creativity. For example, my daughter and her partner have now become the director and producer of movies with a cast of thousands. The stars are Hugo (8 years) and Mara (4 years) and the extras are a plethora of stuffed animals, who lately have been working overtime. (Fortunately, their labor union does not allow them to go on strike.) Together the family writes the script, designs costumes, rehearses, and finally films the superproduction. This is a great activity since it lasts the whole day and can be endlessly repeated with different results.

Those people who lack imagination can always find ideas on Internet. In coronavirus times, the computer is an endless source of daily workout routines, creative baking recipes, sing-a-longs, free language courses, mindfulness sessions, and advice given by cloistered nuns regarding how to endure and enjoy isolation. Conspiracy theorists also abound.

The term confinamiento [confinement] is the Spanish version of shelter in place. This is an excellent example of the importance of context in translation because neither of these concepts really coincides with the other. Most people in the USA have little or no idea what obligatory confinement is like in Spain.

The average middle-class family here lives in an apartment of 80-90 square meters [915 square feet]. This apartment has no yard outside or patio where one can chill in splendid isolation. People have to remain inside all day, though one person can go out to buy necessary items at the grocery store nearest to the apartment building. Outdoor physical exercise or walks in the park are prohibited unless one does not mind paying at least 600€ (over 600 dollars) for each exercise session.

In the USA, shelter in place is voluntary, and a question of self-discipline. People are not restricted to their homes, and can go for walks in the park. However, most do not go out because they are responsible citizens. Nevertheless, there are those who merrily travel to Florida or Mexico for spring break (or to Louisiana for Mardi Gras) and either become infected and/or infect those around them, but they are hopefully the exception.

My brother and his wife, who live in North Carolina and belong to the most vulnerable age group, have not ventured out of their house for the last three weeks except to go to the supermarket early Monday morning during the time reserved for senior citizens. My brother also mentioned that people tend to stay at home because there is no place to go unless they live in a state that allows them to play golf (or stock up on ammunition).

In Spain, the government has quite correctly assumed that the population has no self-discipline. If confinement were not obligatory, everyone would still go out. Even if restaurants, wine bars, and cafes were closed down, this would make little difference. Being outside on the street is part of the Mediterranean lifestyle.

When I first moved to Spain fifty years ago, I was struck by the fact that when I was asked out on a date, it was always an invitation to dar una vuelta por ahí [to stroll around]. At first I thought that por ahí [over there, thereabouts, around] was an actual place. However, I soon realized that Spaniards rarely take goal-directed walks, but prefer to walk around a certain area of town, and periodically stop at places con ambiente [with atmosphere], which seem sufficiently convivial and attractive to enter. This decision to stop at certain bars or restaurants is made on the spur of the moment. Although this type of walk can theoretically go on forever, it eventually ends when the hour gets very late.

Conversely, my students here in Spain find it difficult to understand the concept of loitering (standing or walking around with apparent purpose), which has a variety of translations into Spanish, none of which is very accurate. When I tell them that in the USA, you can get arrested for loitering, their eyes become wide with disbelief. One young man commented, “but, professor, if loitering were illegal in Spain, the whole country would be in jail”. And he is right. Here loitering is a way of life, and one of the reasons why confinement has to be strictly enforced by the police and army. Even with no commerce open, people would still be walking around.

In fact, yesterday, in Granada, a fine was received by a lady who was found strolling around town without purpose and with no apparent destination. The police stopped her and asked if she was aware that it was illegal for her to be outside. When they requested a reason for her infringement of the law, she looked at the officers blankly, and said that she had just wanted to walk around Granada and enjoy the city when no one was on the streets. Apparently, it was difficult for her to believe that what had formerly been a national pastime had suddenly become a punishable offense. The fine received had a curative effect on her powers of understanding.

07 Illegal Immigration in Times of Coronavirus

Spain, like so many other countries throughout the world, has its share of immigrants, legal and otherwise. The largest group is from Morocco though there are also many from Romania, Bulgaria, and South America, who have come to Spain in search of the (western) European dream. In addition, there are the more solvent immigrants from the UK, who come here, fleeing the cruel tyranny of their own weather.

Spain is the main gateway into Europe for irregular immigration from Africa, surpassing Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. Given Spain’s geography, it is not possible to build a huge high beautiful wall to keep people out. Nevertheless, the Mediterranean Sea does what it can. Like the wall along the border between the USA and Mexico, its effectiveness is relative. In the same way as many people from Mexico and Central America manage to cross the border into the USA, many thousands of North Africans successfully cross the Mediterranean each year. Some of these people are sent back to Africa, but many manage to stay.

Still, the Mediterranean, like the border patrols in Texas and California, has played a certain role in discouraging immigrants since it has buried over one thousand people in anonymous watery graves. The victims paid their life savings to human traffickers, who provided them with a seat in a Zodiac inflatable raft and little else. It is estimated that less than a quarter of the drowned have ever been found. Every so often an anonymous body or two wash up on the southern coast of Spain.

One of my sons, who now works as a pilot in Texas, was formerly a lieutenant in the Spanish Air Force. One of his jobs was to fly rescue missions over the Mediterranean, searching for boat people. However, it was never possible to find everyone because there were too many of these expeditions. And desperate people do not always wait for good weather, when there is a greater likelihood of being rescued.

Thanks to the coronavirus, however, Spain is no longer such an attractive place to visit, even for the very desperate. With a consolidated second place on the coronavirus blacklist, Spain has ceased to be an attractive travel destination, regardless of one’s level of foolhardiness. Even when migrants, who are sufficiently desperate to risk infection, arrive here, they find a country in a state of alarm. They cannot work because the economy is paralyzed. There are no jobs, not even disagreeable ones that nobody wants. They cannot go to a different town and search for greener pastures because no one can feely move around the country.

Recently the Spanish government has had a second epiphany. They have suddenly realized that the fruit and vegetable crops must be harvested, and that people are needed to work in the fields. In the past, this work has always been done by immigrants, legal or otherwise, because it is arduous backbreaking work, only apt for the desperate. It has now dawned on the government that migrant workers are necessary….but suddenly there are none.

The fruit producers have bitterly complained because they face economic ruin. They need seasonal workers who are willing and able to spend long hours picking strawberries, cherries, peaches, apricots, etc. but suddenly there are none. All of the workers have vanished.

For example, in Granada, 80% of the green asparagus crop will be lost if there is nobody to pick and pack the produce. Because of the coronavirus, Morocco has closed its borders to passenger traffic, and the (legal) workers, who had been previously contracted to pick strawberries in the Spanish region of Huelva, will not be arriving. Even though the contracts of 6,500 Moroccan workers already in Huelva have been prolonged, it is estimated that an additional 100,000 more workers will be needed for the spring harvest.

The lack of workers has to be dealt with in the next 15 days. After that, it will be too late. The price of fruit will skyrocket, and a necklace of fresh cherries will become more elegant than a diamond choker.

This situation has caused the president of Spain, his vice presidents, and the plethora of ministers in the cabinet to put on their thinking caps and brainstorm in an effort to find a solution for this problem. For the past week, the brainstorm has been more of a braindrizzle, but finally some ideas have surfaced.

One measure that was approved yesterday is to give this seasonal work to the unemployed, who have lost their jobs because of the current economic slowdown. These unemployed workers must live in the same district as the fruit farm because mobility is still limited. Unfortunately this initiative has little or no chance of success.

In their desperation, enterprising fruit farmers have already tried to recruit people from the unemployment bureau. In a recent interview, one of the farmers said that his new employees had not lasted for very long. It took them only a few days to realize that picking fruit was a harder job than working in a shop, restaurant or hotel. They finally preferred to take their chances with the unemployment subsidies, hoping by the time that the money ran out, the economic situation in the country would have improved. And they left. Perhaps they were not sufficiently desperate.

The second measure is to prolong the contracts of those immigrants who are already in Spain. This measure would be promising if it were not for the fact that there are not enough seasonal workers already here to meet the current demand.

The third and final measure is give temporary work permits to the young (illegal) immigrants (18-21 years old), who are already in Spain, but who are lying low somewhere, hoping to ride out the coronavirus storm. The only way to entice them out of the woodwork is to promise them the possibility of working legally. That way Spain and Europe will finally have fresh produce and the migrant workers will have their European dream become reality, at least for a limited time period. After the harvest has ended, what will happen to them then? Only the Shadow knows.

06 The Grand Bazaar of Medical Protection Equipment

Thanks to the coronavirus, the Spanish government has been forced to venture into a vast marketplace, one that is even larger than the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. This new bazaar encompasses the whole world, and its most treasured objects are not handwoven Persian carpets or cashmere pashminas but rather medical protection equipment, surgical masks, and gloves. However, without a doubt, the most sought-after treasures are ventilators, which can mean the difference between life and death in times of coronavirus. When there are not a sufficient number of ventilators available, doctors are forced to choose which patients will live and which will die. Ask my son.

Consequently, countries throughout the world, at least those with a short-term memory longer than that of an aquarium fish, have begun stockpiling this precious material. Those that are smarter than a fifth grader also implement the logistics to efficiently distribute these items to the areas where they are most needed. Needless to say, the Spanish government has not managed to reach the aquarium-fish standard or to pass fifth grade.

Ever since our government had its epiphany and finally realized that Spain is immersed in a health (and economic) crisis of epic proportions, it has been hurriedly trying to buy large quantities of medical equipment in the vast international bazaar. Since this initiative occurred to them somewhat late in the game, everything is now much more expensive. However, even in this economically unfavorable context, they have had no choice but to purchase these items, whatever the cost. Their eagerness is pitifully evident, and those selling medical equipment in the great bazaar know a desperate customer when they see one, a pigeon ripe for plucking.

Not surprisingly, the purchasing efforts of the Spanish government have been somewhat less than successful, perhaps because they are unfamiliar with the rules of engagement in a Persian rug market. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and her cohorts have little or no idea how to navigate the intricate labyrinth of supply and demand.

In many Oriental and Arab cultures, haggling is part and parcel of any buying experience. It is both a science and an art. One is expected to haggle everything from a taxi ride to the price of a tomato. Those who have travelled to places like Shanghai or Istanbul are well aware of the need to bargain for each purchase and to never assume that the protests of the vendor, who invariably swears that you are taking the bread from the mouths of his children, are the truth. Even when bargaining is more or less successful, it is a given that a foreigner will always get screwed to a certain extent. It is just a question of limiting the damage.

Even though the Arabs occupied Spain for 700 years, the haggling gene seems to have gradually disappeared over the centuries. Maybe it was the expulsions of the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabel, or the purges during the Inquisition, but this gene has evidently not survived At least that is the only conclusion that can be derived from the depressing chain of failed missions that Spain has launched to acquire and obtain medical equipment from countries like China and Turkey.

The first monumental failure was when Spain bought 650,000 rapid testing kits from Shenzen Bioeasy Biotechnology, an unlicensed company, which, in all likelihood, is the Chinese branch of the Dollar Tree discount stores. The government initially admitted that the first 9,000 kits that arrived had to be returned because they did not work. Soon afterward they confessed that they were actually forced to return all 650,000 kits because they had a sensitivity of 30% and were incapable of even detecting a loud sneeze.

In an exercise of masochism, the rapid test kits were re-ordered from the same company. Today after a few thousand more deaths, the government claims that the tests have at last arrived and will be distributed. (No one is holding their breath until this happens.) And so, rapid testing still remains a chimera, and even more difficult to receive than a normal test.

My youngest son, who is a police officer in Madrid, has been off work for almost a month because his bosses want to make sure that he does not have coronavirus (his partner fell ill with it). He has no symptoms and is eager to return to work catching conmen and pickpockets at the Madrid Airport.

Apparently going undercover and chasing bad guys is a more restful occupation than staying at home, where he is the adoring slave of his two-year-old daughter, who demands that he play with her all day (which he generally ends up doing). He has asked to be tested but no tests, rapid, slow or otherwise, are available, at least for the police force. It is precisely for this reason that there are deaths (such as those in the nursing homes) that have still not been counted in the great coronavirus tally.

The second commercial fiasco concerned ventilators and sanitary equipment, manufactured in Turkey on behalf of a Spanish firm that had bought the components from China. When the shipment, which had cost millions, was in transit to Spain, the Turkish government suddenly seized it, and said that the equipment would be used to treat its own patients. When the Spanish government protested and tried to get it back, efforts were largely ineffectual. The most that was achieved was Turkey’s dubious assurance that it might consider sending the shipment off at some unspecified date in the weeks to come.

Public indignation was so great (800 people dying each day) that the government kept insisting. Finally, Turkey acceded to send the shipment though, once again, no one is holding their collective breath until it arrives.

Needless to say, in the grocery line today, there was much conjecture about what Spain had offered or threatened Turkey with to make them change their mind. One of my neighbors, who is a retired barber, said that he knew the answer. According to him, Pedro Sanchez had threatened to halt the pilgrimages to Istanbul, where each year hundreds of bald Spaniards travel to get cheap hair implants. All of us laughed, but that is the best explanation that I have heard so far.

This seems to be one more episode in the current epidemic of “medical piracy” where modern Blackbeards are not pirates, corsairs or privateers, but rather national governments, who confiscate and withhold shipments of personal protective equipment and ventilators bound for other nations or states, who are in desperate need. There have been many episodes all over the world, and there will continue to be. It is question of supply and demand.