Lockdown day 76.
From my home in Tiana, Spain.
One person flouts the rules and thereby dupes the entire region. It happened this week in Lleida, a city in Catalonia. This one person had his or her birthday and celebrated with twice as many guests as allowed: not ten ... but twenty. “A little bit more, that shouldn't be a problem,” he or she must have thought. Or maybe the visitors came spontaneously and it was difficult to send them away. Be that as it may, it was a birthday party to remember as it led to a Corona outbreak: 96 new infections, 24 people hospitalized and nine new ICU patients.
Four of the visitors appeared to be infected which caused the spreading. The punishment is that the entire Lleida region will not be allowed to proceed to phase 2 of the de-escalation of 1 June. "Those who cough or feel sick stay at home" is the message. I don't think there were people on that birthday who were visibly sick. The problem is that some of the infections are asymptomatic. So you don't have to feel sick at all to start an outbreak. Various studies indicate that 25 to 30 percent (and sometimes more) of the people who become infected do not show any symptoms.
Civil disobedience sometimes gives a little extra colour to life but can have far-reaching consequences. But this virus is not to be taunted with. Today is my birthday and for safety's sake I celebrate it with a dinner for two: keeping ten people at a distance of two meters is not a party. On my 25th birthday, a friend gave me a booklet by Raoul Chapkis entitled Six days of thoughtlessness can make you cry forever. I thought that was an unforgettable title, only it turns out that for years I misquoted it: "One moment" instead of "six days". Human memory cannot be trusted. Yet for me it is and remains: "a moment of thoughtlessness can make people cry forever."