COVID-19 world: discussions with neighbours and friends - part 1

I will write a few posts that summarize discussions with people around me.

Doctor -- director of a local hospital: With the bird flu they destroyed our poultry industry. With the swine flu they destroyed our pig farms. The meat industry is gone and I thought that there was little left to take --  only agriculture  -- and that they'll leave us alone this time.

Neighbour in the back yard [age -- early 80s]: This is the first year I could not sell my flowers. I used to go to Profi [a store] to sell them because I can not walk to the market. I made a few bouquets and tried sitting on my chair in the gang-way, but now nobody's passing and my grandchildren made me get back inside. They said it might be dangerous. My sister has a bit of money in the bank from when she worked in Spain. She wanted to keep it for her old age. Now she asked my grandson to take it out. What do you think neighbor? Should she take it out? Will the bank fail? What could she buy with them -- locked up in the house? 

I've only went to school for four years in the village [I lived in], but I studied hard in those four years. Afterwards, my parents had no money to send me away for more schooling. I was the oldest and had younger siblings at home. However, I sent my grandchild to college. In the first year of engineering school, he failed an exam, and the school called home to ask if I knew. I said, of course, I do. Then I wrote a letter to the dean and explained that he was twice an orphan because both his parents died when he was eight and I've raised him since. I had a local school teacher check my letter. She only found one or two errors. I write well because I studied when I went to school. I re-wrote that letter, corrected the errors and sent it. The dean called me immediately and asked what they can do to help. I said I needed nothing, but that they should speak with my grandson and encourage him, and ask how he is doing from time to time. My grandson is very proud. He still does not know I wrote to the dean.  He studied, worked hard, and graduated from the engineering school with 9.6 (on a 1-10 scale) -- one of the highest grades in his year -- but the encouragement helped a bit. He's been working as a programmer until recently. His wife is a nurse in a dentists office, but they are both at home now under "technical unemployment" --- their income is like a pension. They said they are lucky to have me in the house because my pension has not changed. Now, I don't know how help. So, I work in the garden, while they are repairing a shed in the front yard.

Another doctor -- Quarantine is a method from the 18th century that does not work.  It has no place in the 21st century. Today we should rely on medications, vaccines, anti-body tests, and properly done statistics. The reported numbers for COVID-19 simply don't justify the steps taken. These steps lead to irreparable destruction and death all over the world. Eventually, people will figure out their lives and livelihoods are being stolen and fight back. If there won't soon be a war [with guns], there will be Nuremberg-type trials for the ones who put these rules in place worldwide and for those who enforced them. If there will be a war, there will still be trials afterwards like after World-War II. These measures will remain in history as the biggest mistake of the 21st century.