COVID-19: the virus that does recognise borders

The differences in the occurrence of coronavirus in various countries of the world have been evident for weeks and are evident in their graphs and percentages. However, the official slogan in governments of countries such as Spain is that the virus attacks everyone equally, that its occurrence is a common misfortune and that nothing could prevent its spread worldwide freely without respecting some countries more than others. What is happening is that the figures are blunt, and they disprove the defence strategy created to save face for governments that did not take the necessary measures when they received the health warnings during the month of February, notably Italy, Spain and the United States, which are the hardest hit on the planet. The foresight of the authorities in the most cautious countries has kept the spread at bay, and the comparisons leave those who today defend equality for all before the COVID in a very bad light. 

South Korea, with less than 200 deaths, is the state everyone is referring to to show how others should have anticipated the massive contagion. It has only 10,000 people affected three months after its Chinese neighbours began to notice the breath of the coronavirus in the back of their necks. Massive testing of the entire population made it possible to identify the carriers and transmitters, and to isolate them from the rest of the population, in addition to compulsory measures of a personal nature that have prevented a tragedy such as the one that Spain is experiencing. 

Germany is one of the biggest mysteries of this pandemic, because its numbers have not skyrocketed despite the high density of its population. One thousand five hundred dead and one hundred thousand infected allow Merkel to consider the prophylactic measures she adopted to be correct, such as carrying out 4,000 tests per million inhabitants, compared to 600 in Spain. 

Portugal shares a border with Spain and mortality there is much lower because the restrictions were adopted with barely one death within its borders. It has just over ten thousand cases, with only 295 deaths from the virus. There are 0.09% of infected people in relation to the total population, and 0.002 deaths. The figures for Spain, with five times the population, are soaring in comparison with its neighbour: 0.29% of its population has so far been decimated by this pandemic and the figures are still rising. Morocco, on Spain's southern border and with 35 million inhabitants, has 1,000 infected people and has reduced the number of deaths to 70. If we look for the detail in countries close to Italy like Greece, geographically similar therefore to Spain, although with a population of more than ten million, the virus has managed to infect only 1,700 people and caused the death of 73. 

In the British Isles we have a very defining situation of this reality in which the virus does recognise borders and finds it difficult to spread from one side to the other: Ireland has less than five thousand diagnosed cases and only 158 deaths, while the United Kingdom, with which it shares land and sea borders, is on its way to five thousand deaths with almost fifty thousand infected. The death rate in Ireland is 0.003, while in its British neighbours it is 0.007, following the hesitation and initial efforts of London's Government to downplay the importance of the disease.

On the first day of the fourth week of confinement, and thanks to what is happening in the United States, we Spaniards are seeing the things that are hidden in our country. Bodies are beginning to be seen. Those of the victims of the virus in New York, wrapped in orange plastic bags, a Dantesque image that has been conspicuous by its absence on Spanish televisions, not even those of the coffins that were so widespread when Italy was the country showing them. The control of communication is justified as fundamental to fighting this peculiar war, and the lack of freedom of movement and fundamental rights is combined with censorship and restrictions on freedom of information.