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 14th 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 14th 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.
