Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 21.4.20

COVID-19 ROUNDUP

General

o This is my table of the 10 countries with the highest per capita deaths. Points to note:-

- Belgium now has the worst number, displacing Spain and Italy.
- The UK has moved up, past The Netherlands and Switzerland
- Ireland vies with the USA for the final position but as of now is 9th.
- Sweden remains at 8th, far behind Belgium, Spain and Italy but not far ahead of Ireland and the USA.
- Germany is, like every other country, still rising but remains low at 58.
- Our neighbour, Portugal, is at 72, way below us. (infra)

	Deaths per M@ 21.4	By deaths per M @ 21.4
Belgium	503	1
Spain	446	2
Italy	399	3
France	310	4
UK	243	5
Netherlands	219	6
Switzerland	165	7
Sweden	156	8
Ireland	139	9
USA	128	10

o Says the Washington Post here: At least 6 factors are responsible for the differences. Understanding them is essential as our government and others struggle to deal with covid-19 and consider how to better prepare for future pandemics. No big surprises.

o The need for effective contract tracing has been emphasised by a major report by the OECD. It says that testing and contact tracing in the community is the "most promising approach" in the short term to help lift the lockdown. 

o Discouraging news re antibody tests. .

Spain

o We might soon be able to go outside - legally, I mean - to get some exercise.

o The government says it will stop price gouging in respect of face masks. My local council of Poio last week kindly delivered 2 to each household, free of charge.

o Zara does something admirable.

France: President Macron has admitted to failings, acknowledging that his office had been insufficiently prepared and had been caught off guard by the outbreak, in particular by the lack of medical equipment. Something of a contrast with the US and UK governments.

Portugal: Went into lockdown at earlier stage than fellow European states, and swift action kept Portugal's coronavirus crisis in check, reports the Guardian here.

The USA: Viewing New York and its environs as a country, it's easily the world’s hottest hot spot, with per capita fatalities double those in Spain and more than double those in Italy, 

Sweden:  Some 'experts' say the strategy of keeping schools, bars, restaurants, and gyms open strategy might be working.

The UK

o Good news re a plasma trial.

o Whether it likes it or not, the government will certainly have to re-introduce the programme of contact tracing. This was abandoned early on.

Russia: Late to be hit by the virus but cases are now rapidly increasing. Even, the death per million of population remains very low, at 3. Up from 2. 

Life in Spain in the Time of Something Like Cholera

• María's chronicle Day 37.
• Drug dealer circumventory tactics.
• A van-dweller's lament. I recall seeing a mass of campers in the carpark of a motorway service station not long after we'd left Jávea to drive back to Pontevedra on 21 March. I guess they were all later chucked off there.
• Does it really make sense, entering the supermarket, to soap the tough blue gloves you're wearing and then put another pair of thin plastic gloves on top of these? I suppose it does in terms of protecting others.

Real Life in Spain

• On-line crime is soaring. 

The USA

• No one should be surprised that Fart's outrageous tweets about liberating certain states were illegal. But, then, no one will be surprised if he gets away with it. Mad president of a mad country.
• Another fine impersonation of the Ventilator King.

The Way of the World 

• The May contract price for oil is negative at -$37.63 a barrel, though today's spot cash price is  $11.70 My guess is that few people can understand this. Do producers have to pay people to take oil off their hands, as it were?  

Finally . . .

• Watching the birds in my garden - well, you have to do something - I note that those with the keenest eyes are the magpies, the crows and the seagulls. All these arrive within minutes of me chucking bread on the lawn but fly off at the slightest movement in my salón. Perhaps they know I hate them. After them, in decreasing order of nervousness, come the sparrows (who flee if I merely stand up from my armchair), the blackbirds, the collared doves, the wood pigeons, and the greenfinches. The latter seem to have taken over the territory around my feeder from the previously resident sparrows. The collared doves, by the way, might well be nesting again in the bougainvillea below my bedroom window. If so, I'll try not to frighten them off like I did last spring.
• My sister would like you to know she's found both of the lost metal objects. What's left of the short poker - the brass handle - was in the ashes of my last fire. Where I'd looked but failed to find anything. And the coaster had fallen from the side-table, rolled across the wooden floor, gone behind a cloth hanging from the TV table and settled itself - vertical - against one of its feet. In a manoeuvre which I doubt it could be replicated in a million years.