Come back tourists, all is forgiven. Fuerteventura is empty.

The restrictions imposed my governments around the world on travel is having a big impact in Fuerteventura, and the Canary Islands in general.

Fuerteventura relies heavily on the tourist trade to provide employment for the residents of the island. The hotels and other tourist related businesses have now been mostly closed for 6 months. This not only means that some of these businesses will not be able to survive but it is disastrous for the lives of many thousands that work in the industry.

There are many families that cannot pay their rent so are losing their homes. Many of these are having to resort to squatting in empty holiday properties or even in half finished buildings without any electricity, water or even windows. As much as I dislike squatters normally I can understand them doing it in situations like this.

These are people who have worked and paid their taxes etc for years, without asking for anything in return, yet they are getting little or no help from the government or social services. There are a few charitable organisations that have sprung up to try and help but there is a limit to what they can do.

Meanwhile, many of the illegal immigrants that have arrived in boats from Morocco recently are being housed and fed in a tourist complex in Corralejo (and now Caleta de Fuste), along with free medical care of course. Legal immigrants have to pay for all of this themselves.

I have read that this week there have been three people who have committed suicide because they have no money for rent or food and can see no way out. I suspect they won’t be the last. These are the real victims of the coronavirus and they won’t be counted.

There have only been two deaths here in Fuerteventura attributed to covid (now still only 13 a year later) . They were two people of 89 and 90 who had serious health issues anyway. I suspect that they didn’t actually die of the virus but it was just a factor. If they had caught the flu, or perhaps even a bad cold, the outcome may have been the same.

I wonder how many others will die because they had hospital appointments cancelled so cancer and other problems weren’t found quickly enough to be able to treat them effectively. Deaths following this will not be counted either.

Yet the governments, aided by the media, continue to induce panic among their populations by quoting how the number of cases is increasing.

The UK’s official figures show how the figures are being manipulated to keep the fear going – Gov.uk Coronovirus (Covid-19) in the UK

The cases graph below shows an increase in cases which is now almost twice as high as during the peak in April (5,429 per day in April – 10,068 per day this week). If you just look at this graph in isolation then it certainly looks like things are becoming very serious and this is a “second wave”. But you cannot just look at this graph, you have to look at the others too.

The testing graph below shows exactly why the number of cases seems to have increased and that is because during the peak of deaths/cases back in April they were carrying out around 23,000 tests per day but now they are doing 265,000 tests a day. That is 11.5 times as many tests. Yet the number of detected cases hasn’t quite doubled. It is not unreasonable to surmise that if they had tested as many during the peak in April then the number of cases would have been at least 11.5 times as many so at least 53,000.

Now the most important of the three graphs is the daily number of deaths. This shows the real picture of the covid situation, the number of cases does not. Back on the worst day on 8th April there were 1073 deaths but this week, even though there are almost twice as many “cases” there were only 47 deaths (1/10/2020).

There is one thing to realise with the death figures. They are not necessarily deaths from Coronavirus. They are described as “Number of deaths of people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test. The actual cause of death may not be COVID-19 in all cases.” In other words, if they were already in the final stages of a terminal illness and tested positive, but died of the illness then they are included. Also, if they tested positive and a week later were run over by a bus they too would be counted.

I do not believe the virus is a hoax or anything like that but clearly it is nowhere near as dangerous as the governments wanted you to believe. Perhaps they actually did believe that it would be far worse and were acting with the best intentions (perhaps) but now they need to admit they were wrong and reverse the draconian restrictions being imposed. Sadly, politicians never admit they were wrong.

This pandemic is over so the world should get back to normal. And I mean the real normal, not this ridiculous “new normal” that is being pushed as a way of controlling the masses. I saw an incredible statement the other day which is just pure attempted brainwashing that said “Our masks mean freedom. Freedom to go out in the World.” Sadly, many people believe all of this rubbish.

What I find incredible is that any normal person wouldn’t trust anything a politician or government says under normal circumstances but they are prepared to believe everything they are told about Covid. These same people, along with the media, then label anyone who doesn’t believe it all as conspiracy theorists.

Rant over! …. For now anyway.

The following two videos show what Corralejo and El Cotillo are like at the moment with so few tourists.