The Dystopian Times, 5. The Sober Twenties.

Thinking over the protest this past Sunday, I remembered that the singer, Miguel Bosé, who had urged people to attend, lost his mother this past spring to Covid. He is the antithesis of Sharon Stone. She denounced that her grandmother and godmother died of Covid, and that her sister, a sufferer of lupus, is in grave condition in the hospital with the virus. She harangued against how Trump and the federal government have abandoned the population to the ravages of the virus, leaving state governors to do whatever they could against it, with fewer resources. This difference in these two public personas kind of makes you wonder a bit about the first.

Oh, the numbers in Spain keep rising. Over two thousand new cases just yesterday. If you look at the total population of forty-eight million, it seems paltry. But we are all connected. A friend of my daughter's, with whom she had been on Saturday, got ill yesterday, with a headache, dizziness, nausea. Immediately, she started worrying on Whatsapp with her friends, wondering who she had been with, then wondering who those she had been with, had been with. Because it takes one person to catch it, and then carry it to someone, who will carry it to someone else, etc. All this before anyone shows any symptoms. In the end, her PCR was negative, so it really was some kind of summer flu. But it did get me thinking about what I would do with my classes. I would hate to be the bearer of such news to my students' parents. "Look, my daughter spent a few hours with an infected friend. Just in case..."

One of the things that has grown in the past twenty years, is the ability to travel widely and closely. Air fares have dropped thanks to budget airlines. For those with decent wages, it is completely possible to spend a weekend in Paris every few months. But not any more. Now, we can't just hop on a plane and travel. Nor on a train, nor pick up our cars. Our ability to travel is now controlled by the virus. Those who could easily do so a year ago, now have to stay home. Even national travel is being reduced because of fear of contagion. Huge industries that grew up around our ability to travel spontaneously, are suffering greatly. 

That we still want to travel is obvious. We have too many national tourists here, especially from hot spots like Madrid and Barcelona. But that we will be able to travel with the same insouciance as we did until now is doubtful. Airlines will surely fold. Others will merge even more. Air fares will reflect a need to earn money by the companies. Hotels will close, and private homes will no longer be open to host total strangers in an extra bedroom. We will have to look to invest in different industries, because the tourism industry will be limping for a long time. 

The Roaring Twenties were a response to the First World War. The Spanish Flu persisted in the first years of the new joie de vivre discovered in the face of the destruction of the old, structured world. Did it help make the twenties roar more than they otherwise would have? Possibly. But the upcoming twenties of this century will be more staid than a hundred years ago. We are being sobered by how fast a little virus can disrupt our world.

Life continues.