Spanish views from a small town

That there are people who deny the pandemic, is only to be expected. Viruses are invisible, and the illness is a bit hit or miss; some people get very sick and die, while others seem to have a mild flu and go about their lives.  Then, last winter when the storm Filomena walloped Madrid with unprecedented snow, there appeared the snow deniers. They crunched up a snowball, tried to melt it with a lighter, and got a blackened snowball. That the snow was cold in their hands didn't mean anything. The deniers immediately claimed the snow was a plastic fake. Never mind. From there we jump to those who claim birds don't exist, that they were all killed to be replaced with robots that watch our every move. Tin foil is not enough for some.  Now come the deniers that missed out on entire classes of earth science in elementary school. Last Saturday, a volcano erupted on the Canary island of La Palma, just where vulcanologists had suspected it would, along the side of a volcano that had al...

There's no running away from news of the virus. We are nearing the peak (I hope) of the third wave, and there is much lamenting. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors are calling for another confinement. Some are beating their chests over lax Christmas rules. In the meantime, people are getting sick, and too many are dying. One that stood out this past week, was a 46 year old man that died rather quickly after begin admitted to the hospital, despite having no pathology of any kind. Our township, despite having had its borders closed for a month, is lucky. Today, we have 41 positives, the most have been 55. We've been down to 35, but have come back up again; still, out of a population of just a thread over 11,000, that's a manageable number at this point. The news is out, too, that this year, because of masks and keeping apart, there have been almost no flu cases. Even some contagious illnesses that parents don't like to vaccinate their children for, such as whooping cough,...