Riding the Wave, 46. We Won't Learn.

And now it seems just about all the western coast of Galicia is being shut down. All our peninsula of Barbanza now has to hunker down in their own township, except Noia and Lousame, that can share quarantine. Most likely, that is because, aside from having a similar rate of infection, there are extremely few services in Lousame. I don't even know if they have a largish supermarket.

Today, the guidelines have been made public for New Year's Eve. They are the same as last week's for Christmas. Mobility will be allowed between townships to visit family, and curfew will be pushed back to 1:30 AM on the 31st. All this simply means that next week, for Epiphany, we'll be on even more red alert for contagion. Even with curfew, illegal parties have been busted in many places, where participants dance like it's 1999, enough to make Prince and the Revolution proud of them. 

Those who set the guidelines seem to think most people are responsible, and will look out after their own health and that of others. For the most part, yes. Fear has been instilled, either by the number of deaths, or by the numbers in the fines imposed. But there will always be those who, whether being young and feeling invincible, or being older and feeling intelligent, will always flout the rules, because rules are made by petty bureaucrats who "know nothing". Then there are those who follow some of the right-wing parties and refuse to use their brain cells. The far right parties criticize the government for limiting people's rights. And then they turn around, and in the same breath, blame the government for all the deaths because they didn't act sooner. Go figure.

But, humans have always been the same, everywhere. During the 1918 pandemic, the city of San Francisco ordered people to wear a mask during the fall of 1918, and enforced the rules. As a result, and helped by social distancing, contagion went down, so far as to rescind the mask order in December. Unfortunately, a third wave appeared in January, 1919, and the masks made a come-back. To combat the new mask law, an Anti-Mask League was created. They asked the mayor, "Sunny Jim" Rolph, at a meeting on the 25th, (at which the former mayor, Eugene Schmitz, convicted of extortion and bribery while in office, and a political rival, spoke) to rescind the new law, saying that it "was an infringement on our personal liberty and that it was not in keeping with the spirit of a truly democratic people to compel people to wear the mask who do not believe in its efficacy, but rather that it is a menace to their health."  

Mayor Rolph responded, "We are all for democracy, and we all want to get rid of the masks when it is considered safe to do so. (...) You don't realize the misery and death that has followed this epidemic, nor the forces required to help these people. We should give our minds to serious matters instead of fighting the little inconvenience occasioned by the wearing of a mask for the protection of the general public." Things went so far that the city public health director received bomb threats. 

So, yes, people are the same now as they were then. Some comply with the law, not so much because they are unselfish, but because otherwise, they have to pay. (The fine in 1918 San Francisco was, at first, five dollars or time in the county jail. The amounts rose when police saw people didn't mind paying five dollars.) Others feel like the law has nothing to do with them, and will not comply at all. Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose.

If people decide to follow the rules, maybe we'll be able to leave our townships by the end of next month. Or, most likely, by the beginning of spring.

Life continues.

Open-air hospital set up in Brookline, Mass., Oct., 1918.