Are we finally done with covid here in Spain?
I’m not sure, but it looks hopeful.
A couple of days before Christmas, the government announced they were bringing back the pointless “obligatory mask outdoors policy”.
Here in Barcelona, though, about half the people just aren’t doing it.
(And why would you?)
Most of the bars and restaurants have similarly lost enthusiasm for checking “vaccine passports”. A lot of places – but definitely not all – were scanning them in the beginning, but at this point it’s been a few weeks since anyone’s asked me.
Here in Barcelona, the only measure that’s still in place is the closing of discos. I think. Hard to tell what’s legal and what’s not, with the laws changing every five minutes.
In any case, there seems to be no attempt to enforce most things. The “authorities” aren’t doing much. So maybe it’s just for aesthetics, on the part of the Socialist party, or the Catalan nationalists.
Pretend like you’re doing something, hope nothing big happens before the next election.
Who’s afraid of a little witch hunt?
A whole lot of people got the omicron variant, right around the New Year.
Symptoms include feeling bad for a few days. Maybe a headache. In other words, a lot of people got a cold around the holidays. Whoop-dee-do.
Apparently, this was somewhat taxing on the sick leave system at health centers. Otherwise, it seems to be about like a normal cold and flu season.
In other news, the Catalan parliament is planning to grant posthumous pardons to more than 800 women who were burned as witches between the 15th and 17th centuries.
I don’t know if Spanish witch hunts were anything like the Salem, Massachusetts situation back in the day, but I guess it probably was: let people denounce their neighbors over made-up “crimes” with no evidence, hang the “guilty” parties, and repeat until the world is 100% safe and everybody can relax.
Seems logical, right?
Actually, it’s pretty terrifying. Check out the Jocko Unravelling podcast for all you need to know about witch hunts: The Devil Moves in Crowds.
Because mass hysteria is real.
Solzhenitsyn reports that back during the Soviet era, Stalin would give speeches, and afterwards, people would clap. Thing is, you couldn’t be the first person to stop clapping. You could be sent to the gulag, for a lack of enthusiasm for the revolution. People would clap for ten to twenty minutes, or more, big standing ovations, in order to appear appropriately enthusiastic.
Eventually, communist party authorities started installing bells in the places where Stalin was going to speak: after 20 minutes or so, they’d ring the bell, indicating that it was safe to stop clapping.
This isn’t the Soviet Union quite yet.
But I used to think that obeying the law meant I had nothing to worry about.
Turns out if you let a bunch of hysterical morons spread mass psychosis about whole classes of people being suddenly “dangerous” – and if you let them change their minds every five minutes about what constitutes legal and acceptable behaviour, well then… you might be illegal yourself, before you know it. Whether or not you’ve actually “done anything wrong”.
Can you prove you’re not a witch? Actually, you can’t.
And can you prove that you’re not giving me covid, even as we speak? Well, no.
You got tested yesterday. But that leaves all last night and this morning for you to have gotten it, you filthy disease vector. I bet you don’t even mask in the shower… disgusting!
Anyway, before you go, listen to the podcast I linked to. Just trust me. The conclusion – in case you don’t have time – is that the witch hunt ended when people just stopped paying attention to the opinions of hysterical morons.
And maybe that’s what we need right now, here in Spain.
Just sayin.
Yours,
Daniel AKA Mr Chorizo.
P.S. Are people in your town still wearing masks? Or participating in other forms of hygiene theater? Let me know, right here in the comments… ¡Salud!
I know, as well as anyone can, that masks work in places where masks actually work.
Outdoors in the empty streets where I would walk, not a fecking chance. You would be pushed to spread ebola, the black death or even butter.
Indoors, with shitty ventilation, OK, maybe but ARGH!
So, is anyone wearing them here, not really. They are near the shops but, with a very few exceptions, nowhere else. I do because I don’t want a fine. When I take the lonely trip down to the bins on goes my mask. Such a pity, in the last two years I have only ever seen about 5 people and we were able to pass with many meters gap. ARGH!.
Laws that are, it seems, pointless; even the idiots who passed it said so, are POINTLESS,ARGH!.
Our health center has also been less useful than an outdoor mask as well due to staff issues.
Masks outdoors, NO, indoors, maybe,:-)
P.S. my last comment was half done, sorry, bin it, keep this. Pretty please
Not hysteria – common sense and precaution. Walking in the crowded streets of cities like Madrid, Barcelona, New York, I wear two masks, not one. A regular blue pharmacy bought one, and a nice cloth one over it. The other day a nicely dressed woman spit on the floor right in front of me. And passing by the countless, inconsiderate, impolite human beings that just cough in your face, I will continue wearing a mask in the streets until I feel safe. It’s not a big deal! Safety and health first.
Okay, and – serious question – when do you think you’ll “feel safe” enough to stop masking?
So we are now on the cusp of Spring, and in Coruna I would say about 50% of people are still masking up in the street.
A lot of it is down to the media and their alarmist narrative. Listen to A3 news and you’d think the world was ending, or maybe they just like to share their narrative at 98 decibels.
Yeah the government/media seems to be invested in keeping people fearful. Interesting times.
I live in Florida so we’ve never bought into the hysteria. My whole frustration (an understatement to be sure) with all this is the level of deception going on. When the simple difference between “with covid” and “from covid” isn’t discussed by any of the so-called experts, then what can you trust? Even Lord Fauci over here admitted in an interview that the vast majority of covid cases with children were incidental cases, which means they went to the hospital for something unrelated to covid then happened to test positive, with or without symptoms. Nuance and detail are all but lost. People still think it’s conspiracy theory but yes, we’ve had people here in FL get shot or hit by a car then listed or attempted to be listed as a covid death because it was in their system. A friend of mine’s aunt passed away from heart failure and they listed her as covid because she was positive at the time of death. Take care, friend.