Coronavirus walks the world, sparing neither ministers, nor presidents, nor their wives. Russia closed the entry for Italians and Chinese, and the United States approached the issue more radically and covered the borders in general for all of Europe, except Great Britain. Europeans are indignant, America reasonably answers them that it was just better to fight the new infection.
The virus really captured Italy, Spain and Germany, and the latter treated it somehow strangely: it hit the western part with all industrial centers and practically did not touch the eastern one. In the distribution of COVID-19, no logic is visible. If it started in China, then why did Italy become the main European hotbed?
Okay, access to the sea, influx of refugees (the first “Italian” infected, we recall, was a native of Pakistan), a not very high hygiene culture combined with the sun ... Why Germany was “halved”, you can also try to explain: the distribution map COVID- 19 is largely the same as the refugee resettlement card.
But then why is it so calm in our huge multinational country, which also has a common border with China? The liberal of the Ekhomoskovsky bottling will answer you that "the authorities are hiding." Okay, what about the rest of Eastern Europe? Poland, Baltic states, Czech Republic? There are cases everywhere, but nowhere is there such an apocalypse sensation as in Europe is “real”, western. Neither Russians nor Americans, by the way, are denied entry anywhere, and it is possible that we will soon find ourselves in a situation where our “red-skinned passport” will be more mobile than any EU citizenship.
Why is that? I have no clear answer to this question. I expect that people in white coats will one day go to the cameras and explain everything. In the meantime, I remember the book of the British writer Golding "Lord of the Flies" about children on a desert island. Children quickly organized themselves and at first coped no worse than adults, but then someone started a rumor about a “beast that comes out of the water” - and fear in half with a panic quickly made them lose the last vestiges of their human appearance. Who was simpler - believed in the "beast", who was older - used fear for their own purposes. However, the outcome was one: when an adult British officer finally appeared on the island, the children were in a state of primitive savages and killed each other.
Why did I remember a novel that you already know about without me? Because, for lack of a medical explanation, I have my own, philistine - the virus spreads more where it is easier to panic. Perhaps this is so-so logic, but within any other main focus of the virus, Russia should have become (again: proximity to China, high population density in capitals, a large number of tourists).
In our country, cases of infection can still be counted on the fingers, and in Germany, where, for a minute, the chancellor chatted to the camera something about hundreds of thousands of patients, the official figure is more than two thousand.
This does not mean that there is no coronavirus - it is, as on the uninhabited island near Golding in the forest there really were wild animals. A new infection exists and spreads: it did not even have time to mow down the number of people who die during epidemics from SARS and influenza, but it has come close to 5000 - so many people die on earth every year during sex. How much more deadly than COVID-19 was the migration crisis for Europe - I’m even afraid to guess.
Coronavirus is one of the threats that we will gradually learn to cope with. In the meantime, we control the borders, limit the number of public events, calmly isolate people with suspected infection, observe them and calmly live on. Of the two options - to be an officer on the island or frightened children - we chose the first, and America, obviously, too. This is a convenient position in every sense. One thing is bad - frightened children (and not coronavirus) nevertheless collapsed stock quotes for us.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.