I have yet to complete my diaries from the Greek Hovel 2020 so you may not be aware that I am now in business with Nicho the Communist and his son but I am am and on that matter I spoke to both the son and also to lovely Eleni at the Kourounis Taverna today. How I wish I was back in warm Kambos rather than wet Wales. Or do I? A lot has changed.
Back in March and April of this year, Greece was being hailed as the pin-up boy of the Covid lockdown jihadists, those in the media and political classes drowning in GroupThink. The Country had imposed the most severe lockdown in Europe and By Jove! It had worked. Greece was, according to the Guardian, The BBC and ITV, beating Covid. That was proof that Britain needed to impose a draconian lockdown too.
Wind forward to today and Greece is seeing 2,000 new infections a day, pro rata that is not that different from the UK. There is now a curfew between 9 PM and 6 AM. You must text the Government to leave your house. The schools are shut. There are draconian restrictions on travel. Poor Eleni can do takeaway only at the Kourounis even though in Kambos and the area surrounding Kalamata there are, touch wood, relatively few cases.
So I guess The Guardian, BBC, ITV, The Independent et al will be running corrections saying “Greece trashed its economy and is in the same boat as the rest of us having lost to Covid”. For there is no correlation between lockdowns and beating Covid. This is however a great lockdown between lockdowns: crushing poverty, rising rates of depression and the destruction of civil liberties.
