BELGIANS IN QUARANTINE

For the past few weeks, we had all been sitting behind our TV and we were watching with more or less interest the development of a Virus which reigned in China and which was called Corona Virus. We made a lot of jokes because it's also a well known brand of beer.

But then it went down to the wire, and we started to think it'll become a very uncertain month that we've got ahead of us.

 Indeed the Virus started to move and spread out. 

The first country which was heavily hit was Italy with the result that the government decided to shut down the whole country, no restaurants, no hotels, no shops, only food stores, no market no, meetings, no sport activity in fact no social life at all anymore then sitting home and washing your hands.

Some people wear masks when they went out. But despite all the precautions it arrived in France, in Spain, and all the other European countries followed and of course also our little Belgium.

Since today we have the same rules like in Italy. We are not allowed to go into a restaurant or a bar, to the theatre or a cinema, to the market or to a football game etc. The schools are closed and the Universities too, but students can follow their courses on internet. Fortunately the nurseries remain open and there is also a daycare for young school children whose parents are both working and have nobody to take care of the children.


The virus looks rather beautiful

As soon as this decree was out, people rushed to the shops to buy food. It was like in war, people lined up in front of stores and a reporter said in the news : "I saw a line of 150 caddies before the opening of a supermarket. Never seen by some regular customers who come to do their shopping quietly. Some people said to me, I have never seen that .."

The shelves were empty especially pasta and rice and two women were fighting for the last loaf of  bread ! A friend of mine had filmed the scene, it was really funny if the situation wouldn't be so bad.

I will do what I am told, wash my hands and keep one meter away from the person I am talking too. To make a joke I took a meter with me and measured before I talked to Nicole.

It's better to take it with humor then sitting in a corner and imagine the worst.
This is only the start, but we try to keep our life as normal as possible with our Scrabble, this is private, unfortunately no painting, as the retirement homes are closed too, but we will find  another activity all in private of course because museums are also closed.

We have in total 556 infected people and two dead, one 90 and one 76 years old. For a country with about 11 million inhabitants it's probably quite a lot.

And you know what is badly missing because people snatched it from the shelves .... Toilet paper !!

What a strange time !





Linking to Linda G.Hills SOCS - Wire