I don’t know about you, but I start 2021 with the unpleasant feeling that 2020 has just been the appetizer of what is to come; come on, the storm Filomena this first weekend has done nothing but enlarge that health, economic and social fatalism with which we had reached the strangest and most ominous Christmas in decades, even though all the official instances have tried to inoculate us with some optimism after the arrival of the first vaccines against covid-19.
Twenty years ago George Clooney starred in a movie, The perfect Storm, where the shipwreck, in 1991, of some fishermen from Sable Island (Canada), victims of the melting of the hurricane remains Grace and a tropical storm, which, in an unexpected turn of events, ended up becoming an explosive cyclogenesis with twenty-meter waves that swept the ship away.
Half a meter of snow shouldn’t be a turn of events in Spain; in fact, in 1961 our grandparents lived with another shovel in hand because the snowplows were neither there nor expected. Their organisms hardened in a post-civil war of hunger and cold, and in the hope of a better future for themselves and their children, were the best vaccine against fatalism; his was only a way station to the future, our fatalism is heading for disenchantment.
We are richer and more studied than our ancestors 60 years ago, we live in better flats, when not semi-detached or chalets, and we have more and better vehicles … to which putting chains costs us a world
We are going to need more than the € 72.7 billion from the European recovery fund. We are richer and more studied than our grandparents, yes, we live in better flats when not semi-detached or chalets, too, and we have more and better vehicles … but putting chains on them costs us a world. That is, we are more fragile in every way, starting with the physical: hundreds, thousands of falls due to the ice, the trauma emergencies of some hospitals whose ICUs are already collapsed, in turn, due to the third wave of the pandemic, and continuing mentally: we believe that our children are going to live worse than us.
If to all this we add that millions of Spaniards will lose the first working week of the “recovery” year because, as the mayor of Madrid has said, Jose Luis Martinez Almeida, is going to take “Several more weeks” dissolve the thousands of tons of snow accumulated on sidewalks and driveways, thus giving the feeling of an extension of the confinement with which we have lived a good part of 2020, what do you want me to tell you … it doesn’t look good.
The devastating report by former Minister Sebastian on the pandemic this Monday: “61,422 cases since Friday, more than double than a week ago, and 401 deaths, double. Weekly growth + 60%. Brutal”.
The former socialist minister explains it very clearly Miguel Sebastian, nothing suspicious of being a furious critic against this Government, when he points out in one of his last comments regarding the third wave of covid-19 the following: “61,422 cases since Friday, more than double than a week ago, and 401 deaths, double. The IA-14 shoots up to 435.6 (85 points more than Friday, 166.4 more than a week ago). Weekly growth + 60%. Brutal ”, said one of the most influential politicians of the Zapatero era this Monday.
And he added about the situation in our country: “Negative records day. Record in incidence at seven days (245) that exceeds the maximum of the second hello reached 10N (238). The 14-day cumulative incidence (AI) rose at the same rate as on Friday (28.4 points per day), reaching 436 for the first time since 19N. The scenarios suggest that the record of the second wave (529) reached on November 9, during the month of January, will be surpassed. Historical record in cases with symptom onset in seven days, which is nine days ahead of IA-14. Madrid is no longer ahead of the rest of Spain in incidence to seven days. It moves with some delay. And, with 352, it remains close to the peak of the second wave (370) reached on September 22. Spain, in these 11 days of January, is no longer the best country of the five great Europeans. We have overtaken France and Italy. Something that did not happen in December ”.
With such a health outlook, the only positive thing about Filomena is that in two weeks, when the infected data is known this weekend, it will surely fall a lot by the forced confinement of the snow. The rest, including the economic outlook, is all worse than bad: delay in vaccination, the Monarchy in question thanks to the wanderings of Juan Carlos I, Moody’s alert this Monday against the risk / country that Spain begins to suffer, extreme polarization in politics and social networks …
Elections in Catalonia
And I am afraid that the result of the Catalan elections of February 14, if they are finally held, will do nothing to cover that black hole what politics has become in that community for a decade. Pedro Sanchez He plays it by putting himself as a candidate for Salvador Illa, because it is not at all clear that the resulting panorama will be enlightening even if I win them the today still part-time Minister of Health.
What’s more, if the famous triple tie that show the latest polls between PSC, ERC and Junts pel Cat by the famous Illa effect is resolved with a new victory of those of a Carles Puigdemont fled in Brussels and now a refugee under the protection of his MEP act, Spain, not the PSOE or Sánchez, is going to have a long-term chronic problem.
I know that the panorama described is susceptible to turning around, indeed, I fervently wish it, and I know that we have to row to get out of this situation at times agonizing for the country, but what do you want me to tell you, I am subscribing to the thesis that a pessimist is a well-informed optimist … Ah! and Happy 2021 despite everything.
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