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Blog Diary in the time of Corona of Robert and Nenad – Day 50 plus 2

5 Jun , 2020  

— 50 + 2 —

Dear Nenad,

Today I sent my text one day later than promised. Today many things in The Netherlands re-opened. Cafés are allowed to have outside terraces now, but with a maximum of two people per table and with prescribed distance. This morning we took a long walk through Amsterdam and indeed already saw the terraces filling up with young people.

The day after tomorrow Italy will re-open traffic between regions, but it is not yet clear whether we will be able to travel there. Also what is needed once we get back is not yet clear. Greece is introducing obligatory testing in June, with 7 days quarantine if the test is negative and 14 days if the test is positive.

We have in any case decided that we will postpone any travel decisions until we get more clarity. Meanwhile numbers in most countries still seem to be decreasing, although not as fast as many hoped. The last day here still 6 people deceased as a result of the virus.

We will now get a strange period, with many measures still in effect but at the same time people have ‘psychologically’ decided that the crisis is over, despite the coming economic crisis and the risk of a second wave.

With a deepening economic crisis this might lead to social unrest, often it just needs a spark. We see this happening in The United States now and it is a worrying development.The same goes for the war being fought now in the media on who decides what is fake news or not. We have written about forms of censorship also in this diary and people with a different opinion are being put in front of the new Inquisition called social media. I am not a big fan of social media as I do not believe that one can give a well-balanced opinion on complex questions in 140 words. Yet this is precisely what happens and politics is nowadays about short-term scoring rather than long-term decisions.

These days I am looking a lot at scenario analysis, i.e. what could potentially happen in the coming year and how can we prepare for that. Here a team of experts presented four scenario’s, which were based on two axis: will we keep an open economy or move to a closed one and will we put safety over freedom or freedom over safety ?

With these combinations they work out four different scenarios of how the future could look like. This is not an attempt to predict the future but an attempt to let people think of what might happen and in what kind of society we want to live. For instance if you put safety over freedom, how will our society look like. As you indicated last week, how much human freedom did we have to sacrifice in these months and still will have to sacrifice?

The study starts with a quote from the Italian writer Paolo Giordano which sums up also my thoughts in a good way:

“I am afraid that I will discover that the civilization I know is like a house of cards. That everything will be erased. But I am also afraid of the opposite, that once the fear is gone, that everything will have stayed as it was.”

Stay healthy! Robert

 

Dear Robert,

Sorry for the delayed reply, start working again to connect with many issues, and I could say that I am a bit burned out. It is not easy to explain, but after two and a half months, I thought it would be easy to restart working. But It happens that many issues are restart at the same time, which is logical, since people didn’t work, and now everybody likes to make up for it. Finally, I spent two months learning and writing every day without a break. Not easy to explain why I didn’t have more rest. 

At the same time, a different level of fear and mistrust are among the people. For example, even the Greek authority allowed traveling. Still, my friends don’t want to go to already paid vacation form July 1st (almost month from now) because they are not confident that everything will be OK there. At the same time, Montenegro doesn’t allow people from Serbia to travel there, but that is a political decision. In general, many misinformation regarding traveling, and nobody knows what is safe and allowed.

From the epidemiological side, we are not safe, since every day there are new patients and deaths (smaller in number) in Serbia and the region. Two days ago more than double in Macedonia, which comes us to an unusual situation. Macedonia is still closed for traveling, but Greece is open. Even Serbian announced that we opened the border with Greece, which is not our neighboring country. Thus travel agencies are planning to travel over Bulgaria, which could be possible, but the road is hazardous and not the highway. 

All in all, this is Balkan, people are not acting responsibly, and we could apply words of Paolo Giordano since the fear disappears, and people are acting like nothing is happen. For example, even the state warning is that every public gathering is forbidden for more the thousands of people, FC Red Star printed 24.000 tickets for the next match. And there are no sanctions. 

Somehow you could see a lack of energy among the people who are going around without wish to be involved in anything, with the idea that something will happen and everything will be better soon. So no social unrest here and life is not easy.

Several friends of mine have tragic deaths in their families, which could have been preventable in a normal situation. Several of them have been operated, but because of delayed reaction with complication. The overall impression is that corona is now an excuse for every negligence, ignorance, and not doing. If I could tell you that we have been bad, imagine how it is now. People could not go to doctors, could not be operated (on time and without a bribe), could not get a proper diagnosis (even after many paid examinations). Somehow I have the impression that nobody is working with little empathy. Time is difficult, and I think that solidarity should be the focus of the people, but it is not. What kind of society we are, and how is it possible that nobody sees this.

Because of everything, I am trying to be focused on learning, which makes me happy and on my grandkids. It is lovely to see them who don’t really care about anything and want only to play. Plus, I got a small cat. She is Tortoiseshell, and I will put her picture on the top to know how special she is. For the moment she is treating me as a mother, I am trying to do my best. There is a beautiful legend about her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6HSIFsOGQo, which correspondence with me on multi-levels.

I hope that you are planning to travel to Italy, and Serbia is becoming more realistic and that soon we will drink that wine and enjoy in Belgrade. 

Cheers to that, Nenad

 

 

 

 

 

 


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