[FROM THE ARTICLE]
As of Wednesday night, Italy is in chaos, as if they were at war. They’ve counted 1,800 new sick people in one day, more than 12,000 total infected and more than 800 dead; they’ve seen food shortages and prison riots with mass escapes and several deaths.
Spain is has experiencing more than 2,000 cases and nearly 50 deaths as of Wednesday, making it the new health concern hotspot in Europe, along with France, where 33 people have already died and more than 1,700 are infected. Even the French minister of culture, Franck Riester, has tested positive for coronavirus. The stock exchanges have collapsed amid a gloomy atmosphere reminiscent of 2008.
This is more than just the common flu.
The evidence in China shows that with drastic measures, it is possible to stop the coronavirus. Evidence in Mediterranean Europe, meanwhile, shows that minimizing the threat is a mistake that could carry catastrophic consequences for both public health and the economy. Donald Trump has an advantage: Europe can be his guinea pig, but he needs to pay attention and learn from its mistakes. He seemed to recognize that when he announced a travel ban from Europe Wednesday night.
I repeat: the coronavirus is not the flu. The problem is not collective hysteria but the absence of precautions and sensible decisions by those in power.
Only a week ago, we Spaniards, oblivious to any drama, peeked out of the corners of our eyes at Italy. They already had 1,717 cases of coronavirus. When the Italians began to take measures, the Germans, Swiss, and French followed in their stead to try to anticipate the virus’s spread. But not the Spanish government. They promoted mass citizen participation in events such as the March 8 feminist demonstrations and insisted that there was no reason for alarm. (No reason? Having a government of socialists and communists is reason enough to live in constant panic.)
For the past week, pro-government Spanish journalists have ridiculed the drastic measures of other countries and chanted that pernicious mantra: “the coronavirus is nothing but a flu.” And so, while Italy, Iran, France, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, and Japan decreed important bans and urged their citizens to avoid rallies and take extreme precautions, the Spanish government threw protesters into the streets while millions of people maintained their travel plans and social gatherings.
On Sunday, as I watched the packed feminist march in Madrid, I suspected something terrible might happen. The Spanish government led the Spaniards to believe that, for some mysterious reason, perhaps associated with the magical properties of our red wine, we were immune to this virus. And according to official reports, we were, but only until the first minute after the end of the last feminist march. Then they admitted we didn’t have 374 coronavirus cases but in fact more than 1,200, an evolving disaster equal to or worse than the Italian one.
On Monday morning, the Spanish government was still paralyzed, overwhelmed, and so no measures were being taken. My sources at La Moncloa suggested the obvious: that “any restrictive measure would have too great an impact on the economy, tourism and work.” So what? The same applies to being bombed by an enemy during the course of war, and surely we wouldn’t dream of not defending ourselves by any means necessary.
That stupid Women’s Day crap is going to be responsible for a lot of people getting this.