Life in the Pandemic

View From the Pandemic 

   Since the 16th of March this year my small family and I have been under quarantine in downtown Santiago.  These photos were taking from our apartment terrace eleven flights up from the street down below on a brisk autumn day in June.

Everybody in our apartment has lost weight for some reason. I owe my weight loss to doing a lot of calisthenics to offset my lack of my usual inner city bicycling but nobody else has dove into the interior workouts like I have so I am at a loss to explain their slimming down. Must be the lack of fatty bread that my in-laws usually buy from the corner market for them and my wife turning this place into a all inclusive resort of nice healthy meals everyday.

With a great relief we finally received a thorough downpour of rain in the city and snow in the Andean cordillera after a very long drought.

  

 Prior to the pandemic a normal winter in Santiago is a cold, dreary toxic event because of the inversion produced by the giant mountains and the mass traffic, wood burning homes and industry. Now, the air is fairly clean and clear with just a fraction of the typical winter traffic because of the quarantines.

Citizens that do not work in hospitals or essential food services are not allowed out now. And except for food and medical needs only the cops and soldiers are seen standing around in the streets. They man the many check points and road blocks throughout the country.  People over the age of 75 are not premitted into the street for any reason besides medical needs and only with the permission of the police who can issue you a three hour pass on your iphone which they check against your Identification(RUT). The authorities seem to focus more enforcement on the poorer barrios and that is rather ironic seeing as it was the richer neighborhoods fleeing from their European vacations that flew in the decease to the country in the first place.