I don't know of a single family in which the topic of discussion these days is not the organization of the Christmas festivities (December 24th, 25th and 26th) as well as the transition from this year to the next (December 31st and January 1st). Here it's necessary to match up the pandemic restrictions of the autonomous community, details of mobility between communities, the different curfews, the number of people from one or more families who can gather to eat, dine or live together in the same house and, what complicates everything, the differing flexibility levels that people have to help make the sudoku come out.
We are set to have complicated holidays in which we are advised to keep mobility to the lowest level possible but it remains to be seen what result will end up being produced, now that many aspects have been defined. Among them, the most important is that gatherings are limited to a maximum of ten people, with the recommendation that there should be no more than two cohabitation bubbles. The Spanish health ministry has gradually ceded ground over recent days and the initial figure of six per group has ended up as ten, one of the recommendations from the Catalan government that has been accepted.
It is not easy to find the point of balance between absolute negativity and total openness, knowing, as we do, that when the foot is lifted from the brake of the Covid restrictions, the next thing is an uncontrolled rise in new contagions, an increase in the number of deaths, more hospital pressure, as well as an increase in the rate of infection and the outbreak risk. In the end, we have all learned to live with this data and to worry when the Rt transmission rate starts inching up from the 0.7 zone. Something that is happening at the time of writing this Wednesday, with the Catalan health department announcing that the Rt had reached 0.89 after several days in which it seemed that its decline was firm, with ten days hovering between 0.77 and 0.78. These are numbers that, when placed in the incubator of a mathematical formula, allow us, while respecting all the unknowns, to anticipate the future.
Recently, a well-known decision maker, one of those who is in the media almost every day, pointed out an impossible truth to me. That the ideal decision would be to have no Christmas celebrations. That is what would serve us best and give us a solid foundation to avoid the third wave. It was a scientific opinion, but this person, unlike the different governments, is not riding an unpredictable bronco while millions of eyes watch, looking closely for one thing or another. Success in the fight against coronavirus is usually very ephemeral as the situation is subject to such rapid change with so many uncontrolled factors in play that, although I hate to say it, putting aside the most drastic measures, which no one seems to want at all, the best approach is to draw up a deescalation chart with inflexible parameters and use that as the instruction manual.
In any case, you also have to give credit, and the Catalan government's measures seem reasonable, balanced and even quite flexible. A few weeks ago, the horizon was much darker, and the effort made and - let's be frank - the ruin of many sectors of society has opened this window for a special type of Christmas. But it will still be Christmas, after all.