We tried quarantine; it didn’t quite work; we just postponed the inevitable. Then we decided that we would ‘live with the virus,’ but after a surge in the number of infections, the attitude towards the coronavirus in most European countries is beginning to take on grotesque proportions, mainly because they are trying to combine the incompatible. Specifically, they want to live relatively normally and have negligible or no new infection numbers, which is, it is now becoming clear, unfeasible. The coronavirus, it is time to admit clearly and loudly, cannot be stopped, at least not without a vaccine (the same one that everyone is waiting for, but no one intends to take), and every other ‘fight’ is an illusion.
Masks, disinfection, and distance are actually the only things that can possibly slow the spread; everything else is an insult to intelligence, yet states, evidently afraid of being accused of inaction, have recently resorted to increasingly bizarre measures. In the Spanish Galicia, they came up with the idea to ban smoking in public areas because it is allegedly believed that blowing smoke spreads virus droplets (a move on par with the past street disinfection, although every virologist will tell you that the virus dies on the street in one minute). In France and Belgium, they are marking parts of cities where masks must be worn outdoors and where they do not need to be. States are threatening each other with some kind of coloring books, even though they all have problems, and you don’t know which one is worse in terms of the number of infections. What is even sadder is that infamous lists are increasingly being used as a means of indulging petty envy among countries, and it has become particularly disgusting to persistently shift responsibility to other states in the style of ‘this would not have happened here if it hadn’t been imported from these or those.’
In Australia, they still think that the lockdown solves the problem, unfortunately, and in many other countries, Croatia assumes that the virus is a night owl that operates after midnight and rests on Sundays, etc. All these more or less meaningless measures and little measures are supposed to create the impression that the authorities are doing something and caring for their beloved citizens, but the sad truth is that they cannot do anything and are putting on a show. Perhaps the best proof of the inevitability of the virus is the island at the end of the world called New Zealand, to which the coronavirus successfully arrived again after more than three months, allegedly through frozen food. If you want life, there is no escape.
The obsession with new infections, on the other hand, is a story in itself. The least important data, useful only as an indicator of the epidemic’s movement, is continuously taken as the supreme truth according to which people’s lives should be guided, although it is far more important how many people are hospitalized, how many are on ventilators, and how many have died, and indeed who has died. However, even more absurd than the persistent insistence on new cases is the claim that ‘it opened too early,’ which seems to come from people who have slept through the past few months or have special needs. If something the past time has shown, it is that essentially there is no connection to when you open because as soon as you do, the virus returns. Whether you were closed for a week or a year, the outcome is ultimately the same; the virus returns. For three months, or even longer, some countries kept their citizens and economies closed, a period during which huge chunks of what had been painstakingly built over the years were erased (the eurozone managed to lose half of the jobs created from the previous crisis in just a few months, for example, and the United Kingdom lost a fifth of its economy), and someone after that has the courage to claim that we opened too early. Really, when exactly were we supposed to open, what was a more favorable moment? In such circumstances, Croatia even appears to be one of the few countries aware of reality – either you live with the virus or the daily lives of citizens completely disintegrate; there is no in-between, although under pressure from others, they will likely resort again to new misguided measures, just to fit into the new wave of hysteria.
