Tag Archives: Compulsory mask wearing

A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 579 [14 October 2021]

Published: 14 October 2021 ~ A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

ON THE 9^thOF OCTOBER, the day after the QR code restrictions hit Kaliningrad, Olga and I walked through the atmospheric autumnal streets of Königsberg and then whizzed off by bus across the other side of town on an errand.

Having alighted from public transport, we decided to stop for a coffee. If we had attempted to enter a café, restaurant or bar today, we would have had to produce a QR code, but because we were buying refreshments from a pavement kiosk, we were, at least for the moment, QR exempt.

Subliminally, the advertising gimmick had worked. I saw a giant cup and a cup of coffee I wanted.

As I waited for my brew, I could not resist contemplating what it must be like to go to work each day not in an office, school, fire station, police station, on a building site or in a city bar but inside a giant coffee cup ~ and an orange one at that!

Through the little glass windowed serving hatch it did not look as if there was an awful lot of room inside the cup, and I began to imagine some of the more expansive people whom I knew in the UK working there. I concluded that they would not be so much inside the cup as wearing it.

Coffee can be bought from kiosks during a new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Joss, my brother, could live in it. I could see the place slowly converting before my eyes. It had a television arial on top, a satellite dish on the side and protruding from the roof a long metal chimney that was smoking like a volcano. Outside, there was a crate of empty beer bottles and a pair of old pants and socks, both with holes in them, hanging on a homemade line strung across the front of the cup, looking like last month’s tea towels.

If this coffee cup was for sale in London, it would be described by London estate agents as ‘a most desirable property’, well-appointed and almost offering commanding views over the road to the bus stop. You certainly would not get much change out of a million quid for it. Five miles outside of Dover, with a 5-star sign above it, the cup would be housing a boat load of migrants. Why Nigel Farage is gazing at it from a hilltop through his binoculars the British government will never know ~ and don’t want to! But this is hardly surprising, as Nigel has a reputation for waking up first and smelling the coffee!

With no one any the wiser as to whether we had a QR code, a bar code, a one-time code, a code that needed verifying or a code that was Top Secret, we took full advantage of our incognitoism by finding a spot in the autumnal sun in which to savour our brew.

Giant pavement-side coffee cups, even bright orange ones, do not as a rule run to tables outside, but just at the back of this one there happened to be an old, long, green Soviet bench, where one could drink one’s coffee whilst ruminating upon the good old days when the proletariat sitting here would have been comfortably unaware that the USSR when it folded would eventually be replaced with coronavirus QR codes. This long and sturdy bench also facilitated my admiration of the pretty and well-stocked flower bed and enabled me to keep an eye on the plums.

Plums! What plums? Whose plums were they? And how had these plums got there? They weren’t aloft growing on a tree these plums but scattered upon the ground. Someone, I conjectured, must have sworn bitterly, perhaps a bit stronger than blaher moohar, when the bottom of the bag that they had been carrying split, plummeting plums all over the paving slabs.

The who and the why of the plums, whilst inspiring at first, soon gave way to the far more exciting realisation that by observing people’s reactions to the plums, I could play the psychoanalyst and categorise them according to plum personalities. Of course, the way they approached and dealt with the plums would not help me to determine whether or not they were in full possession of their QR codes, were evading pricks or considering vaccination at any moment, possibly when they least expected it, but when all was said and done the experiment would be an interesting one, and, besides, I had a cup of coffee to drink.

Twenty sips or so into my coffee and a substantial cohort of pedestrians later, and I had been able to determine that there are basically four types of plum approachers.

1. Those that spotted the plums and walked around them, giving them a particularly wide berth. Any wider and they would have needed a visa, not to mention a coronavirus test or six, as they inadvertently crossed the Polish border.

2. Those who spotted the plums but carried on walking anyway, chatting casually to their companions as though they were no strangers to plums in public places, yet who picked their way through them gingerly as they would a minefield on their way to buying a Sunday newspaper.

3. Next came the sort of people that you would not want to walk across a minefield with, since, seemingly oblivious to their feet and where they were putting them, they inevitably stepped on one or two plums, immediately looking down in alarm at the squish beneath their shoes, no doubt fearing that the lack of fines for Fido’s indifferent owners had landed them in it yet again.

4. Finally, it was the turn of “I’ll give them plums on pavements!” This category was mostly comprised of manly men; you know the sort, either their arms don’t fit or they have gone and grown a beard, not knowing why they have done it and because, quite obviously, it certainly does not suit them, it was the last thing on Earth, next to deliberately stepping on plums, that they should have gone and done to themselves, unless it really was their intention to make themselves look like a bit of a dick.

This category saw the plums but chose to pay no heed to them. They juggernauted along as if plums grew on trees and these boots were made for walking. Unbeknown to them, however, plums can be slippery customers and more than once were the over-confident nearly sent arse overhead. They would step, squash, slip a little, look around really embarrassed, hoping no one had seen them, and then hurry on their way, leaving behind the priceless memory of a bright red face burning like a forest fire in a beard to which they were both ill suited, as well as a boot-imprinted trail of squishy-squashy plum juice.

So, what I had learnt from all this plum gazing? Not a lot. It had been a different way of occupying one’s mind whilst drinking a cup of coffee, although it had made me wish that I was 14 years’ old again, so that I could shout, “Watch out for the plums!” or simply “Plums!” But you can’t go around doing silly things like that when you are (ha! ha!) a ‘mature person’, especially not when you are in somebody else’s country. I bet Adolf Hitler never shouted “Plums!” when he was cruising about the streets of Paris. Boat migrants to England certainly don’t. They just shout, “Take me to your 5-star hotel and give me benefits!” And liberals, who always find something to shout about, would, on seeing the black shiny plums in their path, have been unable to resist the wokeness of going down on one knee whilst crying, “My white knees are in trousers, please forgive me, I am too privileged”.

Conkers on the day of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Young boy: They ain’t plums!
Me: I know. But I just wanted to show that in Kaliningrad at this time of year there are also a lot of horse-chestnut tree …
Young boy: You put those there because you ain’t got any pictures of plums …
Me: Why you cheeky little f …

I finished my coffee, wished the entertaining plums good day, and off we went to complete our errand.

On the way, on this second day of QR codes, giant cups and plums (plums, no less, my friends, which had fallen by the wayside), we overheard a lady at a bus stop complaining loudly to anyone who had a mind (or not) to listen.

It was quite evident by her excited, ruffled and animated manner that she had recently undergone a most traumatic experience. Apparently, she had ventured into a small café to buy some jam and was horrified to discover that not only were most of the people inside the shop not wearing masks but, as far as she could ascertain, none had been asked for their QR codes. “I shall report them! I shall report them!” she wailed, shouting so loud that had her mask been properly in place, which it wasn’t, it would have fallen from her nose, like plums from a wet paper bag, to end up uselessly wrapped around her chin. It was fortunate, therefore, that such a calamity could not occur, as that is where her mask was anyway ~ swaddled around her chin protecting it from coronavirus.

On completion of our errand (there has to be some mystery in this post somewhere!), whilst sitting on the bus with my mask strapped to my elbow, I drifted into contemplation of the feasibility of QR codes extended to encumber access to the city’s supermarkets.

I wondered: “Does it mean that if you do not want to get vaccinated you will have to buy your own shop?” And: “What is the going rate for one of those giant coffee cups?”

Mick Hart on Day 2 of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

If it does happen, if they do impose QR code restrictions on shops, I can see some astute entrepreneur, some Russian equivalent to Del Boy, quickly cashing in on the act. It is not difficult to imagine a fleet of shops on wheels whipping about the city from one estate to another, selling everything from buckwheat to outsize, wooly, babushka-made socks.

Alternatively, we could convert our garage into a Cash & Cart-it Off. Our garage stands at the end of the garden, some distance from the road, but in these coronavirus-challenged times what once might have been regarded as a commercial disadvantage could potentially be transposed into a positive marketing ploy.

All that was needed would be to install large glass windows in the sides of the garage, stack shelves behind them full of sundry goods, position two telescopes on the side of the pavement, preferably coin operated so as to make a few extra kopeks and, Boris your uncle, Svetlana your aunt, you’re in business!

Potential buyers viewing our wares through the telescopes provided could place their orders by Arsebook messenger. On receipt of their orders we would select the goods, load them on the conveyor belt and ship them from store to roadside before you could say, who’s making millions out of the sales of coronavirus masks? What could be better than that? Accessible shops, you say?

Come to think of it, there are probably not a lot more inconvenient places than shops where QR codes could be implemented, except, of course, for public lavs.

Imagine getting jammed in the bog turnstile unable to get your mobile phone from your pocket to display your QR code whilst the call of Nature grows ever more shrill!

This situation, difficult though not insurmountable, would stretch both the imagination and the resources of even the brightest entrepreneur, who would be faced with the daunting prospect of rigging up some curious contraption or other, consisting of a series of pipes, funnels and retractable poes on sticks.

On a less grand but no less adventurous scale, my wife has suggested that we plough up the lawn at our dacha and use it for growing potatoes, which is not such a bad idea, as it would mean no longer having to mow the lawn. But would it mean that we would have to get a statutory dog that never stops barking as a deterrent to potato thieves and to ensure that our neighbours are completely deprived of peace? “What is the use of having a dog that don’t bark? An intelligent lady once said to us. Answer: about as much use as one that never stops barking! Or about as much use as a dog owner who allows its dog to incessantly bark.

Whilst a constant supply of beer and vodka would not be a problem as we could always convert our Soviet garage back to what it was obviously used for when it was first constructed, alas ploughed up lawns will not grow washing sponges or cultivate tins of baked beans. And the last thing that I would want, even if my potato patch was the best thing since Hungary stood up to bullying EU bureaucrats, was to own something so useless that all it does is shite on pavements and bark as if a potato thief has thrust a firework up its arse before leaving the garden with a sack on his back.

Of course, all things considered, it would be far easier and, perhaps, far wiser, certainly less embarrassing, just to go and get vaccinated. But if you do that, will you be tempted to go out every night to the city’s bars and restaurants, just to say that you can? And if so, can you or any of us for that matter, be 100% sure that, even after vaccination and thirty years of boosters, whichever vaccine it is and from wherever the vaccine comes from, will we, the little ordinary people, be guaranteed at some point, preferably sooner than later, a return to the life that we had before? Er, or any life, for that matter. >>‘This statement is false!!!! (See G Soros’ Fact Checker). You will now be redirected to the neoliberal globalist version, which is as honest as philanthropy and almost twice as honest as the EU parliament ~ which is not exactly difficult (Source: An Open Borders Publication}’<<

Plough a straight furrow or walk a taut tightrope, whichever path you choose to take, do ‘Watch out for those plums!’

ON TOPIC>
A trilogy of games by that renowned board-game maker John Wankinson: the perfect way to unlock, unwind and vaccinate whilst taking your mind off coronavirus and the interminable elusiveness of returning to normality:
UK Lockdown New Board Game
Exit Strategy Board Game
Clueless ~ a World Health Board Game

Image attributions:
Yapping dog: https://www.clipartmax.com/download/m2i8Z5H7G6A0N4H7_barking-dog-animal-free-black-white-clipart-images-yap-clipart/
Plums: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/539028.htm

Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants

Wearing a mask is like wearing pants. Really?

Published: 24 November 2020 ~ Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants

Of all things that are mysterious and confusing about coronavirus, the salient example is mask wearing, or rather the contentious issue of mandatory mask wearing.

Enter Bill Gates. Bill would seem to be an ardent mask-wearing supporter, so much so that he has difficulty in comprehending why anyone should object to wearing a mask. Peeping out into our world from behind his very large wallet, nothing could be more natural or normal to Bill than slinging a piece of fabric about one’s nose and mouth. His is so convinced about the normality inherent in this practice that he considers the psychology of anti-maskers ‘weird’ and asks “I mean, what are these, like, nudists?” Then goes on to make a bizarre comparison between wearing masks and wearing pants: “We ask you to wear pants and, you know, no American says — or very few Americans say — that that’s, like, some terrible thing.” {source: www.wionews.com} [29/03/24 Link to this page no longer exists]

You see, Bill, my old mate, the thing is that this comparison is not really a valid one. I don’t know where you wear your pants, but most people wear them around their arse, and have been doing so for years. There are distinct convenience and comfort factors in pants-wearing that do not readily relate to the experience of wearing face masks.

For one, a bandage wrapped around your nose and mouth tends to get in the way of that all-important function of breathing, whereas pants do not, unless, of course, you are wearing them over your head ~ Bill?

Where Bill wears his pants or mask is entirely up to him. Correction, where he wears his pants is entirely up to him; I forgot for a moment that mask wearing is obligatory.

It was not always this way.

Time was once, and recently, although it seems like an age away, when if you were to wear a mask in public you would be guaranteed to excite a certain degree of suspicion. Indeed, before we were forced to do otherwise the only people wearing masks, discounting for the moment those who have a penchant for PVC or leather, were muggers and bank robbers. In the bad old pre-mask days, shops, banks and government offices would not insist that you wear a mask, they would insist that you remove it! How times change ~ and suddenly!

Fauci claimed that “wearing a mask, keeping a distance, avoiding crowds, being outdoors as much as you possibly can – weather permitted – and washing your hands” are the defining ways for one to return to the normal world’. {source: wionews.com ¹} A nice sentence that begs a one-word response. When?

When, Mr Fauci, when?

The mask is the single most potent reminder that normality has gone, and its odiousness is this respect has not been helped any by suggestions that mask wearing may be with us forever. So, for the time being at least (let us be optimistic), the mask is the visual signal, the day-by-day reminder of our altered state of reality ~ the corporate logo of the so-called New Normal.

Some cynics believe that this visual statement, the compliance it represents and the fear it engenders, is an essential weapon in the psychological arsenal of governments and Big Pharma intent on ensuring the maximum uptake of their rushed and suspect vaccine products. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there are millions, billions of people, purchasing cart loads of vaccines, not to mention vitamin pills and, lest we forget (how could we?), masks, there is money to be made. Lots.

But let’s not be trite, here. A few months back there were a number of articles written by medical and health specialists postulating that not only are masks useless in the fight against coronavirus but that they can actually contribute to your chances of catching it. The out and out criticism was that wearing a mask for virus prevention was like wearing string underpants to stop a pea. Here we go again, Bill?

The case against mask wearing has since swung to wearing masks correctly, ie moulded around the facial contours, never touched by hand, changed periodically ~ at least every two hours ~ not placed in one’s pocket, not washed and not re-used. An idealistic scenario unlikely to be achieved when the majority of mask wearers do not seem capable of rising to the challenge of the basic principles of how to wear a mask.

How many mask wearers have you clocked wearing their masks correctly? Sitting baggy, possibly like Bill’s pants (who knows?), swinging from the ears, acting as a chin cuff and, the old favourite, mouth gagged, snout out ~ this is how they are worn.

Whenever I see someone wearing their mask like this, as in the last and most popular example, and, of course, I do, because my wife is one such transgressor (she refers to masks as ‘muzzles’), I am reminded of something I saw on Facebook: two drawings, with captions. The first caption read, ‘Wearing your mask like this …’ (there then followed a drawing of someone wearing a mask with their nose sticking out above it) “is as silly as wearing your underpants like this …” (there then followed an image of a pair of Y-fronts pulled halfway up with a willy hung over the waistband). “That’s funny,” I thought, “doesn’t everyone wear their Y-fronts like this?”

Bill?

And yet the risk of catching coronavirus by improper face mask wearing is possibly not so high as the risk that emanates from face mask fiddling. You see, wearing a chunk of cloth over your nose and mouth is devilishly uncomfortable. After a while it can make your face hot and sweaty, and it can also make you itch. OK, so you can suffer the same inconvenience should you be wearing the wrong kind of pants, but there is a subtle difference. In adjusting your mask and scratching your itch, you generally touch your face and possibly, inadvertently, your mouth, nose and eyes, which is precisely what you are told that you must not do if you do not want to catch coronavirus.

But what about the altruistic argument, the one that goes that mask wearing significantly reduces the risk of passing coronavirus onto someone else, especially if you happen to be an asymptomatic spreader? In the first instance, look no further for the answer in Bill’s string underpants and their pea-stopping potential ~ catching coronavirus is a two-way process: what gets in must get out. And this also applies to the mysterious, unproven asymptomatic as much as it does to the snotty-nosed cougher.

So, extrapolating what we know already about masks from the lack of evidence placed before us, what we can say irrefutably is that no one knows. And this is where we are at, at the moment: mask wearing will protect you from catching coronavirus, mask wearing will increase your chances of catching coronavirus; mask wearing is a temporary measure, mask wearing is here forever. And this ambiguity rolls over into other things, such as: the vaccine is coming, but no one knows when; the vaccine is a game changer, but what game and whose? The vaccine will not be the 100% solution that people have been led to believe: it may work for some and not for others; it may not work at all; it may have serious contraindications; it may have built-in lethal implications ~well, let’s don’t go there for the moment. And what about lockdown? For some it is the bib and tucker; for others it is Bill Gate’s underpants. There is a lot of hot air about it, but no hard evidence to support it, so to speak.

In fact, all that we can say with any degree of certainty about coronavirus, from what we have been fed, is that your guess is as good as mine.

What we can say, getting back to masks, is that generally speaking, the general public are not comfortable wearing them. There is a convincing argument that politicians and big neoliberal corporate globalists have no problem with it as they never show their true face anyway, but for the many, as distinct from the few, normal human contact is not traditionally mask to mask, it is traditionally face to face.

So, to summarise, masks are uncomfortable, they make breathing, one of the main functioning processes of the body difficult and speaking problematic, symbolically they are a constant reminder of a deviant reality, and, at worst, they could actually create the environment for catching the very disease which they purport to prevent.

Whatever one’s feeling about masks, the inescapable fact is that ultimately, human visual contact and human communication is a face-to-face transaction, not a mask-to-mask one, since full-time mask wearing is as alien as it is alienating.

But I should not worry about it too much, Bill, the only confusion you seem to be suffering from is a pants and mask one, and whichever it is and wherever you wear them, it does not seem to have affected you any, as you still seem perfectly capable of talking out of yours.

Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants — **NOW, WHERE DID I PUT THAT MASK?**

(Image attribution: https://freesvg.org/johnny-automatic-head-up-ass)

Source:
1. https://www.wionews.com/world/bill-gates-wonders-whether-anti-maskers-are-nudists-and-why-they-wont-wear-masks-343913

😉Coronavirus Language & the Mask Argument

Coronavirus Language & the Mask Argument

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 209 [9 October 2020]

Published: 11 October 2020

Coronavirus chaos has strengthened its grip on the UK, the focus having now switched away from London to the north of the country. There are so many different ideas, protocols and strategies proposed for or operating in so many different regions and towns that the British public have been propelled into a second wave of terminal confusion. ‘Traffic lights’, three-tier systems, pub curfews, the Rule of Six, social distancing, lockdown ~ this lexical explosion, perpetrated by political pundits and lobbed like grenades into the public arena by hack journalists, has not, as linguists would have us believe, helped a beleaguered public to communicate better the altered shape of their lives and collective state of mind as much as it has routed common sense.

Coronavirus language & the mask argument

The new speak is bandied around as something positive given to us by the New Normal in return for stealing our lives. It is a poor substitute, thrilling perhaps for linguists and for those who devote their lives to the pursuit of adding slang to dictionaries, but for the humble man on the street (now locked down in his home), it is just so much unnecessary verbiage.

As I sit here in Kaliningrad ~ sometimes Königsberg ~ I have, by slow and calculated degrees, weened myself off my daily habit of consulting UK Google News, because (a) it is depressing and (b) after five minutes of reading, I feel as if I am drowning in alphabetti spaghetti.

Alphabetti spaghetti

There are no such buzzwords in Kaliningrad as there are in the UK, not even, or very rarely, a mention of ‘second wave’, but the protection that this offers us from the contagion of new speak and from the ill-thought-through strategies, U-turns and excuses around which in the UK these catch-all words revolve, does not, as with the rest of the infected world, extend immunity to the real problem, coronavirus, or provide us with a way back to the life we have lost and for which we grieve.

I suppose that in the last analysis as long as you remember to step carefully through the media spaghetti, the semantics are irrelevant; they ‘don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world’; it is simply a case of whether or not you like your beans spiced or served as they come without relish.

Coronavirus language & the mask argument

Today, for example (9 October 2020), without a lot of fuss, I learn from consulting Kaliningrad news that 67 new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, bringing the total number of infected to 4,970 in this region. A total of 3,521 people have recovered, and the total number of deaths since the onset of the pandemic stands at 89¹.

Whilst this should come as no surprise to anybody, as governments around the world, the WHO, scientists and health practitioners have been telling us all along to regard summer as little more than a seasonal respite, because this virus, like most respiratory viruses, favours a romp in the autumn and winter months, some critics here have inferred that a contributory factor to the increased number of Covid-19 cases has been “a decrease in the vigilance of the population”².

This mainly, but non-specifically, I assume refers to the controversial subject of mask-wearing in confined public spaces. It is quite astonishing that 12 months into the pandemic, the world’s health gurus, scientists, governments and the public are still at serious odds about how efficacious face masks are as a preventative measure against Covid-19, and that this one issue alone illustrates not only how polarised opinion has become on how best to protect oneself against the virus but also serves to remind us of how fallible our knowledge is and how vulnerable we are when the science community on which we rely are unable to reach consensus on something so fundamental.

In the UK, here and elsewhere in the Covid-19 world, the division and opposition between maskers and anti-maskers defines the ambiguities of the ‘New Normal’ as well as its extremes, and allegiance and loyalty to one or the other is breeding the kind of resentment and partisan hostility usually reserved for, as Leonard Cohen describes it, “the war between the black and white and … left and right”, not to mention the rancour between the leave and remain camps of Brexit. Indeed, the line drawn in the sand between pro- and anti-maskers is as deep as any encountered and has a universal reach.

Coronavirus language & the mask argument

In Kaliningrad to mask or not to mask has led to altercations on public transport and recently, it was reported, that a fight broke out on a bus between a pro-masker and an anti-masker³. There is no doubt that throughout the infected world feelings are running high, but is this the result of fear or bigotry, frustration, ignorance or ambiguity, or a little bit of everything and a little more besides? Whatever is stoking it, as with all last stands on the moral high ground, since both opposing parties are convinced that the cause which they espouse has right upon its side, unless someone steps up to the plate and passes final judgement on the mask vs no mask case, the heat can only go up and the situation can only deteriorate.

As with all arguments of this nature ~ inconclusive ones ~ there is no flexibility, no ground to give. The pro-maskers believe unquestionably that face masks can prevent or at least protect against the spread of the disease, whilst the anti-maskers argue that not only are masks ineffective but that wearing them incorrectly can actually increase one’s chances of catching coronavirus, particularly if masks are carried, handled and worn in ways that contradict and confound the science by which their usefulness, and by default their limitations, are defined.

Consider the following, which was emailed to the comments section of the article cited above³ [Note that this has been reproduced verbatim using an automated translation service]:

‘Who among those who like to wear masks observes these rules? How to Wear a Medical Mask: Important Recommendations A disposable medical mask is only used once. The mask is placed on the face so that it covers the nose, mouth and chin. If the mask has strings, they must be tied tightly. If a plastic fastener is sewn into the mask in the area of the nose, it is tightly fitted with your fingers to the bridge of the nose. Many masks have special folds. They are unfolded to give the garment a more functional shape for a snug fit to the face. While wearing the mask, it is not recommended to touch its protective field with your hands. After touching the mask, hands are washed with soap and then treated with a special antiseptic. It is better not to take breaks in the process of wearing the mask: after removing the product from the face, a person, as a rule, touches it with his hands, shifts to the chin and neck, or even puts it in his pocket, and this is strictly prohibited. Dispose of the wet mask immediately and put on another, dry and clean. On average, the medical mask is changed every 2 hours. Removing the used mask, you must not touch the protective layer of the product, where pathogens have already accumulated. The mask is gently pulled off the face by grasping the ear loops or strings. Knowing how to properly wear a medical face mask is very important. Otherwise, the protective effect of the product will be minimized, and the risk of “catching” the virus, on the contrary, increases significantly.’

In the early days of coronavirus a friend of ours, who, incidentally, is a confirmed anti-masker who wears a mask begrudgingly, reminded someone on public transport that they were not wearing a mask. She was promptly informed by the non-mask wearer that there was no need for her to wear a mask because she was not infected. Our friend replied, that she was not thinking of her infecting others but being infected herself. When the bus conductress came along, who also was not wearing a mask, our friend asked if she challenged passengers who were not wearing masks and asked them to put them on. She replied: “Of course not!”

Two week ago I travelled by tram across the city, whereupon I observed some people wearing masks and some not. My maths have always left a lot to be desired, but in my humble opinion I would estimate that the split was equal at 50:50. In the article quoted above³, interviews with public transport staff conclude that since the onset of coronavirus and the early days of the mask-wearing rule the uptake has improved and is improving, even if the grumbling has not.

Coronavirus language & the mask argument

And what about me? For my own part, I am a reformed anti-masker/reluctant masker, but my gut feeling echoes the sentiments of the commentator whose words I quoted earlier in this post, namely that knowledge of and adherence to the art and science of mask wearing is, firstly, not well understood, and secondly, even if it was, is difficult if not impossible to transact under normal societal conditions. And under New Normal conditions? Well, I will try to answer that when somebody tells me in plain English or in simple Russian what the New Normal is.

In the meantime, no more spaghetti for me, thanks, I have signed myself up for a detox diet.

How do you spell ‘NOT SURE’? Coronavirus Language & the Mask Argument
(*Photo credit)

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are exactly that, opinions. The current rules, as I understand them, are that the wearing of masks is mandatory on public transport and in other enclosed public places, ie shops, chemists, etc …

References
1. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/91655-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-podtverdili-67-sluchaev-koronavirusa
2. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/91641-kravchenko-lichno-ya-ne-predpolagal-takogo-stremitelnogo-rosta-chisla-zabolevshih-koronavirusom
3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/91610-potasovki-rugan-i-smirenie-kak-v-transporte-kaliningrada-boryutsya-s-narushitelyami-masochnogo-rezhima

*(Photo credit: bernswaelz (pixabay.com) https://www.needpix.com/photo/download/531227/letters-noodles-food-pasta-free-pictures-free-photos-free-images-royalty-free-free-illustrations)

Arguing in Coronavirus Isolation

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 74 [1 June 2020]

If we must argue, there’s always coronavirus

Published: 1 June 2020

Have you ever found yourself embroiled in an argument when you are not quite sure what the argument is about?

This is what is happening with us. If it is not a result of being cooped up together in coronavirus lockdown, then it might possibly be another of those mystery symptoms of coronavirus itself.

My wife, Olga’s, stance has always been one of ‘I can’t understand this virus … how does it work that some countries have such a high rate of infection and others don’t? From this position, the question evolves into ‘how is it that countries that are practising isolation, lockdown and social distancing often have more cases, and more serious cases, of coronavirus than those who deviate from the assumed correct procedures (inevitably, given its geographical location, the first example of such deviation has to be Belarus ~ where the trend has been bucked, where life goes on much the same but the stated incidence of coronavirus is relatively small).

Then there are questions relating to the ever-changing, never constant miscellany of theories, suppositions, and half-truths (perhaps sprinkled with one or two no-truths) thrown at us by the world’s media. These questions revolve around the inconstancy, which inevitably becomes the contradictory, and before you can say mass vaccination, we are off down the slippery slope into the sink of conspiracy.

Let’s move on.

In Russia, as with almost every other part of Europe, the trend has been towards a relaxation or easing of the social distancing rules and associated limitations widely acknowledged as restricting or slowing the spread of Covid-19 based on a day-by-day assessment of risks and the trade-off between those risks, ie the chances of contracting the virus, loss of quality of life and the good of the economy.

Here, the strategies adopted vary from region to region depending on circumstances specific to each region ~ Russia is a big country, so this makes sense ~ and it is up to those in charge of each region to decide whether to lift certain restrictions, persist with them or even, if the situation warrants it, increase them.

So far so good, but the sticking point for my good lady is that in the Kaliningrad region mask wearing, so she informs me, is compulsory on the streets, and of this she is most skeptical.

My get-out clause is that as I travel only from A to B (A being the house and B the shop) rather than to all the other letters of the alphabet, wearing a mask as I stride along the cobbles is not insupportable. Like her, I do not much care for it, as I do not have a demister for my sunglasses, and I, too, am not entirely convinced that masks do more good than harm ~ is a sweaty face a magnet for coro? And the next time you are out and about see how many people are fiddling with their mask, thus touching their face with their fingers and hands, and how many times, for no apparent reason than just because you are wearing a mask, you feel the instinctive need to scratch your nose!

On the efficacy of this imperative it would seem Olga and I find common ground, but where we diverge pointedly is in her accumulative insistence that ‘something funny is going on’ in the world, that is the world of coronavirus. In the all-encompassing, claustrophobic world of coronavirus, this is a constant bone of contention, which is unfortunate if you are, like me, vegetarian, but her main problem ~ apart from me ~ is that she is incapable of accepting that as this is a new virus the situation is an evolving one and that our politicians’, health specialists’ and scientists’ opinions, and it follows their strategies, are subject to revision as and when new circumstances come to light.

The continual race by the world’s media to be the first to report it, does not help. Invariably, some media organisations seem to be one jump ahead of themselves, do not have all the facts or deliberately misinform, the name of this age-old game to sell newspapers and also nowadays to get you to click on their online feeds to satisfy their advertisers.

With their help, and not a little assistance by Facebook Fannies, Olga has stumbled so far into Conspiracy Mire that she has arrived at the most unenviable point, the point of no return. It is a dark and misty place. But wait, who is that ahead of her? Can it be? Could it be? Indeed, it is that man ~ the man who wants to vaccinate the world. Why? Because he wants to chip us all!

Arguing in Coronavirus Isolation ~ will we all be chipped? — THERE IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY THAT THEY ARE GOING TO CHIP ALL OF US!!
(Photo credit: Frank Vincentz – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17942659)

In the words of an old song, ‘Oh, can it be that it was all so simple then‘. What happened to the days when the only chips we had to worry about was the fatty-fry much-lardy kind that came soaked in vinegar and wrapped in newspaper?

With cholesterol, sorry, I mean coronavirus, is it plainly a case of having your chips and eating them? Stay safe but not at any price?

In those moments when we least understand each other, and there have been one or two over the past 20 years, my wife alludes to the difference between the Russian and English mindset. Apparently, the British populace are all too willing to play by the book. They are told to do something, and they do it. I did not like to draw her attention to what I consider to be the Skegness syndrome, namely that at the beginning of the lockdown rules a good proportion of British folk flouted them, preferring a day in Skegness (and other places, no doubt) and to hell with the pandemic. And that, only a couple of days ago, over the Bank Holiday period, hundreds were packing their suntan oil and tinnies for the pleasures of Brighton beach.

I am, of course, aware of a recent article on RT headlined Almost quarter of Russians believe coronavirus is fictional, according to new study¹ and note this comment, which appeared at the end of an article about Russians still being interested in foreign holidays: “This is the mentality of Russians — they don’t give up².”

As I said to my wife, I am not surrendering yet, but where coronavirus is concerned, whatever your suspicions or beliefs, as my old mate Falstaff said when we last had a pint together in the days when Wetherspoon were allowed to open, ‘Discretion is the better part of valor’.

References
¹https://www.rt.com/russia/489996-quarter-russians-believe-coronavirus-fictional/ [accessed 31 May 2020]

²https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/29/russia-wants-to-spark-a-domestic-tourism-boom-will-it-work-a70411 [accessed 31 May 2020]