This is the cover of Azores biggest newspaper tomorrow's edition.
The lady in blue is the nurse coordinating my team, a brilliant woman who has dedicated 16 hours per day to this fight for the past 4 weeks. The only way we can make her get some rest every now and then is by organizing ourselves and deliberately ignoring her on her off days so that she gives up and goes home a bit earlier.
She is sitting on my chair, that yellow bottle is mine. She sat there because I refused to be photographed when the reporter came in, and an empty chair would look ugly in the picture.
The reason I refused to be photographed is because we had just been given those masks two minutes before and told to put them on. When we saw them coming we were happy, as we have been demanding them for days. To our dismay, we were told we would get one each and that we should take care of it because it would have to last one or two weeks. They're designed to be discarded at least every three hours, sooner if they become damp.
When I saw the reporter coming in, I immediately left in protest, and stood at the door laughing at the situation.
When you talk about propaganda and cover-up in China, think about this. It happens everywhere. You're just oblivious to the one around you.
I'm not being braver than my colleagues by standing up. It's just that they are employees with bosses, whose bosses are the government. I'm a volunteer, so I do what I want, and my colleagues thanked me for embarrassing their bosses and the newspaper.
(not at a Wetherspoons before you ask).
