Tsunami 21 & 22. Opening.

Finally! As of Friday we can move around and get together with three other people! Normal classes! Normal shopping! Feasting my eyes on landscapes I haven't seen in over two months! Seeing people again! But not completely.

The clinical committee of our region got together this morning and decided to further open the region, but according to rates of contagion. There are still seventeen townships that will remain completely closed. Then there are several health areas that will open, but not as much, those include the areas of Pontevedra, A Coruña, and Ferrol, along with the townships that depend on the hospitals in those areas. The health areas of Lugo, Ourense, Santiago, and Vigo will open a little bit more. Most importantly, there can be movement among those townships, so we can at least move around, and even go down to Vigo by highway, though we probably won't be able to go to nearby Vilagarcía, which I believe depends on the hospitals of Pontevedra. And Catoira, just across the river Ulla, is completely out of bounds because it is one of the seventeen townships that remain closed. The complete details of where we can and can't go are still pretty hazy.

What is striking is that, though Galicia is closed to the rest of Spain, as well as each township within it, and people cannot get together, there was a march last Saturday in Santiago. It was ostensibly to protest a law that will be approved next week, which sets out guidelines for times like this pandemic. Fines will be approved of up to €60,000 for jumping closures, €100 minimum for not wearing a mask when it is obligatory, and fines for not getting mandatory vaccinations or tests. Personally, I am sure more than a few police are going to read the new law as they see fit. However, some people need to have their wallets reached into to comply with public health laws. 

Like those who marched through Santiago. Most of them either wore their masks down around their necks, or simply didn't. They carried signs calling the new proposed law, the "Auschwitz law" (ley Auschwitz), and wound up calling out 5G signals as highly dangerous to our welfare, and that the pandemic was fake and no big deal. The police refused to fine any of them for coming to Santiago when they couldn't, nor for refusing to wear masks. They argued that the right to peaceful assembly was a right that hadn't been put on hold by the regulations to control contagion. Okay, whatever. 

Yes, our rights are important. No, they shouldn't be lightly put on hold. But conditions are not right for gathering in large numbers. And, I wouldn't find it strange if, by next week, Santiago might be locked down again, just because a few of the protestors this weekend might have spread some more contagion. Civic responsibility was what regional President Feijoo called out for today. Well, some of those protestors don't seem to understand they need to show some, as well.

In the meantime, I still have to give classes online until Friday. After that, I have to design one particular class. Three can come, but the fourth was told to keep to herself as much as possible because one of the grandparents who lives with her family is about to receive chemotherapy for a cancer. I will have to dig out a web cam I bought a long time ago, and figure out how to have her on the screen, with the others sitting around the study table. It doesn't sound very promising. 

Vaccinations are beginning for those over 80 today. My in-laws have been called for next month, as has my aunt. By the time they get to my husband and me, it will probably be June. For my daughter, probably at the end of the year. Just as long as the shots are being distributed, and the incidence goes down, I'll be happy. And if I can take a drive somewhere, too.

Life continues.