Karma's a bitch

No prizes for guessing the subject of this entry from its title. The news that the Trumps have contracted Coronavirus is exactly as surprising as the fact that the first presidential 'debate' turned into farce, with one of the participants in particular keener on a chimps' tea party than actually engaging in debate. (Always a potential problem when one of the candidates is nobody's idea of a great public speaker and the other is barely capable of stringing a coherent sentence together. Wonder if that came up in the producers' planning meetings?)

Anyway, now the next debate is in doubt thanks to Trump contracting a virus that just a week ago he told people 'not to worry about' because it 'affects virtually nobody', only the 'elderly and those with heart conditions'. 208,000 fatalities in the States strongly suggests otherwise, but don't worry, because he also said they're 'rounding the turn' of the pandemic, and has criticised his opponent Biden for wearing a mask and not gathering large numbers of people together at campaign rallies.

Now I don't believe in karma, but it's the only word that adequately stands as a synecdoche for what I feel is going on right now. And I know I'm hardly alone in that feeling, if my limited view of social media is anything to go by. I try to be a decent person when I hear news like this about somebody for whom I feel genuine antipathy – see my entry on Thatcher's death for a similar conscience wrestle some time ago. But Trump makes it very, very, very difficult to wish him a recovery. No, strike that – he makes it impossible. Even when Boris Johnson was hospitalised with Covid, I didn't want the man to die. I hoped, instead, that he'd learn from it and come out with a renewed appreciation of the value of the NHS. Fat chance, of course, but that was nonetheless my feeling at the time.

Now I don't want Trump to die either, but the reasons are rather less noble. I don't want him becoming some kind of political martyr to the extremists, climate-change deniers, MAGA dickheads and ultra-conservative right that he represents. I don't want those of his followers who believe the virus is a Chinese-engineered biological weapon to have any further 'evidence' for their bizarre claims. And I don't want any kind of sympathy that may be generated for the man if he gets properly ill to be converted into votes. 

So despite my glee at the entirely appropriate condition in which he finds himself, and despite that fact that if he comes out of it without having been seriously ill, it will add fuel to his 'don't worry about it' line, I'm in the awkward position of having to hope he recovers quickly enough that he can't make political capital out of it. Better he comes out of it looking stupid (sorry; more stupid) than he comes out of it looking like some kind of tough-nut 'fighter'.

This year has been comfortably the worst that many millions of people can ever remember. In every corner of the globe, whether it's forest fires, the pandemic, refugee crises, the ongoing rise of the extreme right, increasingly extreme weather events, Brexit looming, human sacrifice or dogs and cats living together (one for the Ghostbusters fans there), it's just been a complete shit-show from the fucking start. It may yet, though, have one positive note to end on, or almost end on.

I'll tell you what, 2020. You give us the gift of a Biden victory on November 3rd – a clear victory that can't be dragged through the courts for six months while Trump takes to squatting in the Oval Office – and we'll let bygones be bygones, eh?

Dawn of the brain dead

So we're seven weeks in to quarantine here (I think!) and we do, regrettably, finally have a confirmed case in the village. Inevitable, I suppose, given that very few corners of the globe seem to have escaped entirely. But we're both still well and if we were hardly leaving the house at all before (you're not even allowed out for exercise here) we'll be doing so even less now. Suspect we'll be discovering what the freezer's been hiding in the ice monster at the back over the next few weeks. We're coping happily enough with the confinement – though I'm really missing football now. I do confess, however, that I don't miss the weekly terror of another defeat on the inexorable slide to relegation that most weekends brought.

The reason for the title of this entry would not test the guessing capabilities of a simpleton. In a world, virtual and physical, where we're being told the Chinese created the virus deliberately, that 5G masts spread it. That it doesn't exist at all, that 'cures' can be bought on the internet. What we most needed was the planet's most powerful half-wit telling his countrymen and women to ingest bleach.

It is, of course, the press's fault – he was only being sarcastic to test their reaction. Well let's give the man way, way, way more credit than he deserves and believe him for a moment. Such a 'test' at the very least shows that this so-called politician has about as much grasp of politics as a three-year old. You can only hope that his supporters, who seem bewilderingly in thrall to this dolt, aren't stupid enough to follow his advice.

A secondary reason for the title is a piece of what (I hope at least) was poor journalism on a Spanish newspaper's website, claiming that medical staff at a hospital had been attacked by a 'fallecido' of Covid-19. This means that a dead victim of the virus attacked hospital staff. For everybody who's been waiting with something like gleeful anticipation of the zombie apocalypse, or who regard this crisis fearfully as its herald, the accuracy or otherwise of that paper's headline will be of considerable import.

Away from Trump and other horrors, the vast majority of 'normal' people continue to display patience, empathy and support for those on the front line. Just in the social media stuff I see, which is extremely limited, there are friends of my partner making medical gowns and masks in Sussex, others volunteering to help locals who can't get out to do their own shopping. The spirit of community, which in large cities is at best attenuated and at worst non-existent, has been revived most powerfully when people paradoxically are forced to stay away from each other.

I've seen a lot of messages that we can't go back to 'normal', that 'normal' was the problem. Well, yes. I'd certainly like to hope that when we slowly start to come out of this, the recent appreciation shown to key workers everywhere is converted into something a bit more concrete, that would actually confer rewards on them for their hard work and fortitude. I'd be lying, though, if I said I thought that's what would happen. The everyday worries that most people have to deal with - the mortgage, the kids, their job - will quickly barge their way to the front of most people's thinking, understandably. Brexit (remember that?) will once again dominate the news.

Of course some aspects of society will have changed - we'll all fly less, I reckon, because it's going to be a lot more expensive and people won't have the money if they were furloughed. There may also be a lot fewer airlines about. But the right won't have to pay lip service daily to the NHS and can go back to denying them pay rises and telling us how lucky we'll be to be 'independent' of the EU, though this crisis demonstrates the inter-connectedness of things in a manner which should be clear even to the stupidest individual. Stuff like this affects everybody, and would better be resisted if we prepared for it, and then fought it, together.

Be well, all.

Update - a week and a day into quarantine

So, what was going to be a 15-day stay-at-home order will now be 30 days, on pain of a €600 fine if you're stopped by the police out and about without good reason. Food shopping, going to work if you're a key worker, etc, is OK. Just being a bit stir crazy and needing to get out is not. Seeing the pictures from Bondi Beach and various places in the UK recently are very frustrating when this thing has already taken so many, and is now taking people known to me. My sincerest condolences to M, E and G for the loss of their father in Madrid. And best wishes to P for the recovery of his father, currently in hospital. This is going to get close to home for a lot of people, including some of those who were in those photos in Snowdonia, the royal parks etc. It's fucking horrible. Stay indoors, people. Seriously - they're not saying this shit for nothing.

I said to mates in a (virtual) drink last week that, in times like this, you see the best and worst in people. So looking up, not down, I'd like to beg your indulgence for a moment while I big up my own missus and some other ladies in our village who have been producing masks for staff at local hospitals, old peoples' residences etc. Now I know the score - they're not going to stop the infection on their own. But I defer to the knowledge of medical professionals here, and the nurses here have told us that not only are they helpful in a clinical environment, but there's a chronic shortage of them here. They're using disposable, paper masks, or nothing at all. Against that, cloth masks are an improvement.

My partner Cris, and others, have answered the call. She has produced hundreds of these things - working from 7am on Sunday, I think it was, through the day, pumping them out as fast as she could. The effort continues and others have joined in – shout outs to Minda, Yoli, Marián, ChuChi, Pura and anybody else I've forgotten or am unaware of, to whom my apologies, for doing the same. What started as a few masks for local nurses has spread to the hospital at a much bigger town about 45 mins away asking for them too. Hundreds are needed, pretty much anywhere that they're used.

They come in a range of looks...

Something for everyone.

My admiration for such gestures, and I've seen many others all over the place from good, selfless people who want to do something positive, is rather tempered by the fact that they're necessary at all. 

We call the everyday heroes and heroines behind these masks, and others like them, 'key workers'. They are indeed the keystones on which any functioning society is based. I know this is hardly original thinking but it's medical staff, teachers, cleaners, transport workers, food industry and chain-of-supply workers, and so on, all those people who are still working now when many others have been told not to, who hold our society up. Any structure, whether actual or abstract, is only as strong as its foundation, no matter the riches at the top. You don't build anything by starting with a 300-ton gold roof and then go about supporting it with balsa-wood and flour'n'water glue.

I haven't heard anybody yet wondering when the hedge fund managers, the currency speculators and stock market players are going to step up and keep things running. I've picked on finance but it could just as easy be, I don't know, YouTube 'influencers', fashion designers or footballers. Nothing personal against any of those people – my point is that the money is all in the wrong damn place. Cuts are routinely made to public health services and a lack of basic stuff like masks, soaps, and staff are the inevitable result, for all the lip service they're then paid by the government when they're front and centre of a crisis like this one.

You can't pay your mortgage, or build hospitals, with lip service. I'd love to believe that when (if) western society recovers from this, this imbalance will be addressed and wealth shared a bit more freely with those who have so little of it but make it possible for others 'above' them in the first place. A pipe dream, of course. You only have to look across the Atlantic so see the 'advice' the dolt in charge over there is giving to know exactly how much the people who profit from the work of others with much less money than them really grasp this reality.

Anyway. Be well, everybody. Stay home if you don't have to go out and listen to the advice of the medical professionals, not the divs selling 'cures' and other charlatans.

Spain calling, Spain calling. Reporting from quarantine.

Unlike in the UK, where money still drives Tory thinking and they won't take the necessary steps to enforce business closures because it'd cost the insurers too much*, Spain is in the first week of an Italian-style national close-down. There is no public transport, and you can be fined for leaving the house without good cause. You can go food shopping, get to the chemist or go to work if you can't work from home, but all the bars, restaurants and other shops are closed.

I know for some people, the idea of not being able to leave the house for 15 days represents some kind of hell. My missus is coping so far but will no doubt be climbing the walls with boredom before the quarantine is loosened. I however, already work from home (or anywhere with an internet connection) and being very, very far from an outdoorsman, am perfectly happy indoors. Don't get me wrong - the day before the doors were closed, it was warm and sunny here so we were out on the lake canoeing. (It snowed the following day - if the virus doesn't end us, nature will take its revenge some other way soon enough...) I enjoy getting out and doing that type of stuff as much as anybody. But I, and others like me, am going to make some excellent progress on some unfinished PS4 games in the next couple of weeks.

We've not yet been hit in the village with the sort of panic buying that has characterised the UK and the larger cities here. With so few people, there's been enough to go round so far. The shops had anticipated a run on the same stuff that's been selling out everywhere else, so the last time I went into one of the village's little shops, there were pallets of loo roll piled up in readiness. The toilet roll will become the short-hand image for this crisis when we later look back on it. I don't understand this at all - how often do most people shop for bog roll? I'd suggest it's the once-a-month big shop stock-up item at most. Why people feel the need to take 200 rolls home at a time is entirely beyond me. Are they expecting to be inside for six months? And why not toothpaste, for example? (Or has that sold out in the UK as well?)

I can sort of understand this on one level only. Some of the images here have been so close to the end-of-the-world, zombie apocalypse film shots that it's eerie. The roads out of Madrid were absolutely stationary last weekend, and the roads in entirely empty. The village filled up with people who are usually only here in August in the last few days, no doubt bringing the virus with them if it wasn't here already. (I was also guilty of this, travelling home from the UK on Feb 10th, but I was travelling to my only home and had little choice.)

The illness itself? I'm not worried for my personal well-being. The hysteria generated by some of the false 'facts', 'cures' and other shit that the internet generates is easy enough to ignore if you have an even vaguely incredulous mind. I am worried for my partner, who has asthma, and my mother, whose age and health could make it very grave for her if she gets it. But the sensible approach is to follow the (official) advice, stay indoors as much as possible and not deny people who really need them the essentials from the shops by buying as much of it as you can carry.

Speaking selfishly, the worst thing for me personally, other than the worries for my loved ones, has been the absence of sport. No scores to check, no discussion of what's happened, no relegation-panic at the latest defeat or joy at an unexpected victory. The escape that sport usually offers, which would be more welcome than ever at the moment, leaves a noticeable hole. Some people, understandably with time on their hands, have gone to some lengths to provide something for the hollow-eyed, sport-deprived addicts. I offer these as an example - I've seen these overdubbed into Spanish as well, showing that this has international appeal and stands as an outstanding piece of work, I think.

Ludicrous as it is, I'm finding these tense(!), an indication that even a small hit is hugely welcome to those of us suffering from withdrawal symptoms from the lack of sport. They've apparently put on 26,000 subscribers recently so it's not just me...

On a final, serious note, I hope that times like this will, when it's eventually over, leave a legacy of caring and thoughts for older and vulnerable people in everyone's minds, and a strong sense of guilt for those who needlessly emptied the shop shelves and left nothing for those who already have little.

I hope you and yours all stay well, and that our societies learn lessons from this.

(Edit - two ambulances have just rushed past the house with sirens blaring and lights flashing. I have never seen this before here. I didn't even know there was a second ambulance in the village. Possibly unrelated, of course, but alarming nonetheless...)


*This is exactly the sort of shit that people forgot about when they voted Tory in previously Labour heartlands during the General Election. They were so blinded by their desire to get out of the EU that they ignored, or forgot, that their livelihoods, even their lives, matter less to the monied elite than cash. This is an (entirely unforeseeable but depressingly unsurprising) example of the sort of consequences such decisions can have. *Steps down off soapbox*