This text may expire tomorrow, like all the news on this topic. In the - I think - wrongly called "information age", there is so much data that changes every day spread faster than the virus. I am not going to venture to give information of the virus itself, as this number will surely change throughout the day and the next weeks. Here I do not come to tell you about things that I am NOT AN EXPERT, but about the perception that I have had in all this, from this side of the world.
Since the virus started in Wuhan, Icelandic news, like elsewhere, began to give it more and more space as -the by then epidemic - spread in Chinese territory. Perhaps the distance, perhaps the low probability of death, or perhaps ignorance, made the scenario a “casual one”, we kept going on with our life, if something it was more a conversation topic, between the “it’s snowing today” and the “what are your plans for the weekend?". Suddenly, surprise! Italy begins to have an outbreak that spread like fire on dry grass, fast enough to infect several passengers on a flight that was coming to the small island. And then, the story changed.
Week after week, since the first announced case, we have been witnessing how the number of infected and quarantined people is on the rise and, with it, the government measures. Since January, they were already beginning to consider whether closing the country would be convenient. Without tests or statistics, I can say a week before, everything seemed to be running smoothly. But little by little, you could hear that there were some preparations. The ones that were getting ready to work remotely, the announcement of the cancelation of the hospital’s strike ... still all was calm and order. Except for the panic shopping of hand sanitiser, from which there is no trace in any store
On Thursday, I received a message from my Icelandic course. The class, which was supposed to start next Tuesday, would start in two more weeks. I already suspected that the big wave was coming. I remembered 2009, I was still in high school, almost at the end of the academic year, with tons of assignments and final exams. In particular, one from my Literature teacher, who had announced a terrible final exam, of those in which you have to write pages and pages to support your answer. And suddenly, the government's dispositions: closed schools, closed everything. My sister and I spent the days without going out, we arrived to her birthday, without celebrating it (a strange thing for her since she has always been very celebrated). And my Literature exam had to be sent by email. Perhaps it is the experience of the famous H1N1 influenza that left sequels in my head on how to prepare. Stay home. Go out only for the necessary things. And wash our hands ... but we no longer had soap.
That same day, we would go to the famous and only Costco in Iceland to buy soap, since if we go on weekends, there is an overwhelming sea of people so we prefer not to buy anything because we don’t want to queue. And there I saw it, panic, on its physical form.One that focuses only on the soft and resistant qualities. The shopping of toilet paper. There goes a lady with her cart of two packages of about forty rolls and a net of oranges. Another one with all her pantry and her two toilet paper packages, and in the queuing lines, there were toilet paper in each cart, as if they were on sale. Seeing the size of the lines made us give up and buy the soap elsewhere.
We went to another store, far away from Costco. And there, the story was the same. I could not stop laughing. People depleted the toilet paper shelf, and for some strange reason, the Palmolive soap ... just the Palmolive one. I had to take a photo of course, at the end of the day I majored in Communication. The flour and yeast ran out, but in the rest of the shelves there was bonanza. Cans, meats, vegetables and fruits were almost intact. Obviously, the authorities have noticed this pattern of people and have called on society to not make this ridiculous purchases, since establishments have enough product in their inventory. On the other hand, gyms had closed, as they are a center for contagion. Little by little, the message is becoming clear: stay home.
Yesterday the news would change the picture a little more. The health authorities on their update of the situation, announced that from Sunday at midnight, the disposition to take was the so-called SOCIAL DISTANCE. A few hours after this pronouncement, I got the message from my Icelandic course that it would be taught online. A. will work the following weeks from home and, since I am working in a place where I cannot stop going, it will be the only activity that I do away from home. I still don't think people are getting into total panic, I suppose the authorities are preventing this from happening in any way possible. But I also don't think I see people taking their measures with logic and caution. Today, in a store, I saw that latex gloves are available to people, which were all over the floor after they used them.