Coronavirus: What the Horses Don't Know.

It must be a hard time for those who are currently trapped in a small apartment. A couple of rooms, and someone always on the family computer playing games. The cat ('I told you, we should have got a dog') scratches itself fitfully waiting for what turns out to be the last tin of Whiskas. The beer ran out two days ago. Perhaps there's a minuscule terrace to escape from the mother-in-law, but those poor souls are going crazy under house arrest.
The government said two weeks, then two weeks more. They'll likely have to add another few weeks after that.
How can people survive like this?
Apparently, one third of the entire planet is in lockdown. Every day, famous people - politicians, actors, princes and clowns - are reported to have caught the plague. Probably they will survive. Not for them the gigantic gymnasiums full of beds and harassed nurses, forced to wash their face-masks as there aren't any spare. An ice-rink serving as a morgue. Tearful doctors on Facebook videos. Old people in a residence run by the nuns found dead by the army. No one allowed to attend a funeral for a final farewell.
The government spent years cutting back on health costs, closing down units, research departments and staff. It's all creaking at the edges. It's worse in Italy, and now getting that way all over. In America, a teen is turned away from a Los Angeles hospital and dies miserably a few hours later. Like 27,500,000 of his fellow citizens, he didn't have health insurance.
It's serious. Some people are asking to see how far the limits are, whether they can walk to the second-nearest supermarket, or if they can go there every day. Maybe just a teensy-weensy drinks party with the neighbours. Perhaps if I go outside at night down to the beach and keep well away from others...
Many people have to go out. They still have a job. I feel for them.
There's a page which reports the daily stats for Spain, other countries and for the whole world. Today's stats (Friday 27th March) for Spain are 64,059 cases reported (are all cases reported? Probably not). So far, there have been 4,934 deaths, including today the 48-year-old head of the GAR (Spain's answer to the SWAT). So, evidently it is not just unfit elderly people who are at risk.
I'm lucky. I live in a house in the campo with stables and horses that need feeding. While the business is closed (it's a riding school) and there's no money coming in, and horse-feed is expensive, we were stockpiling before the crisis. Yes, while you've been hoarding toilet paper, we've been hoarding straw.
In our case, we are three. Me, my wife who is the expert on horses but is in a wheelchair, and her large strapping son who is 21 and gets to muck out the stalls. This means, in my case, around four hours a day lugging bales of this and sacks of that, plus watering all the 34 horses under our care - of which 33 of them are extremely dangerous (one of them trod on my foot yesterday) and the 34th is a week-old foal (but with a certain look in her eye...). Without lots of exercise, rather like those poor folk cooped up in a small apartment, horses get aggressive and bouncy. And me, I'm getting long in the tooth.
There's no one else to help because, you know, lockdown.
So, we don't go out, or at least we haven't so far. The chickens provide us with eggs and the bread-lady delivers (for how much longer?) two loaves every day. We have our own olive oil from last winter's crop and we have tomatoes and papaya. It could be worse.
The TV is on, and we watch as the Government makes a hash of things. We wonder if the other lot, the opposition, would have made a bigger cock-up; but with luck, we shall never know.
Try and get through this. Perhaps we will become better people following this terrible time.
Stay safe.