March 8th, 2020
March 8th, 2020,
In the midst of a large lunch at the
affordable, though hurried, Basque restaurant in Zaragoza (Itziar), I can see the news to my right. Sitting there with my kids, and extended
family, most of the meal is occupied by making sure everyone has their dish,
has the portions cut right so as to ingest them properly, and eating quick
enough before the waiters diced we’ve had enough time on that course! We can’t here the news, but we see maps of
Italy with huge swaths of the North of the country in red, and headlines below
stating something to the effect of “16 million under confinement”. Though serious, the news still felt far away,
that this was something we did not need to worry about in a concrete way
here. I messaged with my cousins in
Northern Italy to see how they were. Other
than staying at home they seemed fine, except the one in Milano where the
situation was more dramatic.
As the week between March 1s and 8th
progressed, the new of the coronavirus seemed to get closer and closer. What seem to be primarily a problem of
certain regional centers in China, bringing back memories to the SARS epidemic,
now seemed to be sneaking out….you hear of Iran (and this leads to suspicions
of why China and Iran are hit so hard initially, all sorts of stories emerge from there…), and
in a couple of weeks I am hearing things like “the army in Italy deployed to
fight the coronavirus”…What exactly it means for an army to “fight” a virus,
and why this language is even permissible, is beyond me…but when I text my
cousin in Northern Italy he says, “What army?! No!”…..
So, at this point, it is unclear of this
virus thing is just a limited story that is begin blown out of proportion or
not (as many have pointed out the flu continues to be very lethal for vulnerable
populations and we barely pay notice)… the voices seem to vary and it is
unclear what will happen.
The next week from March 8th to
the 16th becomes decisive, at least in Spain. The marches for international women’s day go
on as planned, though this becomes a point of contention later: “was it responsible for those events to go
on?” “In the midst of community transmission of the virus, especially in
Madrid, should the feminist platforms have called for a postponed
celebration? Did going on with the demo demonstrate
a feminist politics of care, or a symbolic steadfastness to a date?” In church that very Sunday, at the Mass, the priest
read the new rules for community celebration that would be followed
–safeguarding distance, avoiding touch as a form of veneration, giving signs of
peace without contact and Eucharistic ministers sanitizing hands before and
after the Sacrament.
At least in our city, the “novel
coronavirus” was beginning to mobilize a series of events, actors and behaviors
(almost in a classic ANT move?), and one had to react either incorporating new
behaviors into daily life, ignoring them (which was still possible this week)
or insisting that not enough was being done and intentionally keeping kids
home, avoiding work, or hoarding toilet paper.
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