According to Authorities

From my friend Ana’s brother Jose, who lives in Madrid:

1. Don’t leave home, but if you have to, then leave home.
2. The masks are useless, but they’re helpful. If you can, wear one, or wear a scarf or don’t wear them at all because they’re only good if you’ve got the virus, but you could have the virus and not know it.  So, yes, masks are helpful, wear one.  Oh, there aren’t any available?  Then don’t wear one, they’re useless anyway.
3. Stores are closed, except for the ones that are open.
4. Don’t go to hospitals, unless you have to, only for emergencies. What’s an emergency? If you think you’re dying, that’s an emergency, then go.  Otherwise, stay home since it’s like the flu…Well, it’s like a bad flu.  Well, it’s much worse than the flu.  Well, you may just die.
5. Gloves don’t help, but they could help.
6. Supermarket food won’t run out, but some items are scarce if you go at the end of the day but don’t grocery shop in the morning.  Better go at the end of the day and if something’s missing, return the next day.  No, it’s best if you don’t go out.
7. After buying groceries, leave your shoes at the door and wash your clothes in the hot/hot setting.  If you wash it in the normal setting, the virus won’t go away.  The virus won’t die if it spins in the washer with soap and set to cold/hot.  However, just wash your hands for 2 minutes and that kills the virus.
8. The virus does not affect children unless for those who have it.  Well, in Madrid many children have been hospitalized, but it’s mostly elderly people (like in any disease).  So no, this does not affect children.
9. Animals do not catch the virus, but having said this, a cat in Brussels tested positive in February.  When no one was getting tested, this cat got tested because we liked him, and that’s that.  Animals don’t catch it, although we don’t really know because we don’t test them, so no, they’re healthy.  Although animals transmitted the virus, but not anymore.  A bat, a pangolin, a Labrador, well no, it was a unicorn, or a panda bear, or a dolphin.  A man ate soup of something and look what happened!
10. You’ll have lots of symptoms if you’re sick, very high fever, loss of taste and smell, shortness of breath, diarrea… But you can also be asymptomatic, you can have symptoms without being sick (like a psychological pregnancy) or be contagious without symptoms or have a spring allergy and then you die anyway but no, that’s not it.
11. In order to stay healthy, you must eat well and exercise, but eat whatever you have at home and don’t go out to exercise.  You can exercise at home, there’s lots of videos, everyone is exercising.  Yoga, yoga, do lots of yoga.
12. Don’t get close to older people but take care of them, take food to them and medication to them.  In other words, have contact with them.
13. You can order prepared food which has perhaps been prepared by people without gloves and without masks.  When it arrives, don’t eat it and let it sit outside your home for 3 hours.
14. You can’t see your mother or your grandmother, but you can take a taxi and talk to the elderly taxi driver or talk to the pharmacist who is a very nice older lady.
15. The virus remains active on different surfaces for two hours, no, four hours, no, six hours, no, no, we haven’t said hours, maybe it’s days? But it needs a humid environment.  Oh no, not necessarily.
16. The virus remains suspended in air, or not, or maybe… especially in a closed room.  In one hour one sick person can contaminate ten others, so if a child gets sick, all your children were contaminated in school a while back, but let’s close the schools anyway because they have not caught it yet.
17. They report the number of dead but they don’t report how many are infected.  We will do massive testing, but not tomorrow, the next day, or even next week.  We’ll get to it, there’s no rush.  The Chinese ripped us of with the tests.  So we won’t do testing, heck, if you feel sick, it means you have it and that’s that.
18. We don’t have a treatment but there may be one which apparently is not dangerous and it works but in reality it doesn’t, or maybe it does,  it’s just had good results in some patients but not in all, so then we do have a treatment, but we don’t really have one.
19. We should stay in confinement till the virus disappears but it will only disappear if we attain herd immunity and therefore, when it circulates… and for that we need to break free of confinement.
20. Don’t worry, everything is under control and we have figured everything out, because of course Spain has the best professionals and the best healthcare  system.  And our Queen Letizia is nice and healthy, thank you.

P.S. Every day go out on your balcony to applaud and sing “We shall Overcome” several times a day to avoid depression.  Every day when 500 people die, it’s as if a plane with 500 passengers crashed, it doesn’t mean anything because the numbers are decreasing,  and it’s just a number anyway and it’s important to applaud and sing and have a festive atmosphere.  We are Spaniards and we shall overcome!