by Today I’ve had a bit of a runny nose and a cough. It can’t be, surely. Millions of people must be Googling symptoms, wondering if this sneeze or that sniffle might be it.
We’ve had yet another sunny day. After my two lessons (which is a good day all of a sudden) I read my book in the park. It didn’t feel like Timișoara, but more like an expanded version of Temuka. Tomorrow I’ll make some progress on the book I’m writing, as long as I haven’t developed a raging fever in the meantime.
I’ve been plotting Romania’s coronavirus cases on a logarithmic chart I manually created. The numbers now come out twice a day, and I was relieved to see the 6pm figure of “only” 260, instead of something closer to 300. It’s too early to say where we’ll end up, especially as I don’t know how much testing is getting done.
Elsewhere in Europe, it isn’t too early. The situation is very ugly now. The latest figures in Italy show 475 deaths (19% of the previous total of 2503) in 24 hours. The death toll in France in the last 24 hours was 89 (51% of the previous total), while in the UK it was 32 (44% of the previous total). It’s those percentages that are so shocking. Emmanuel Macron made an impassioned speech on Monday night, and hopefully the French will get the message and those percentages might start to fall. In the UK I’m not so sure. They wasted valuable time on their herd immunity “strategy”, and as far as I know, many Brits are still going to pubs and malls like it’s a divine right. My prediction for the UK is that it will end up in a very bad place indeed.
On a much more positive note, here are some pictures from my trip to the mountains. I hope you agree that it was a beautiful place to spend a “last chance” weekend. The picture with the logs and dogs was from the place where I was served palincă.
