OTISFIELD — Patric Walton is in a lockdown. He can’t leave his house except to get groceries, go to the doctor or walk a dog “a couple of feet” in front of the house.

The Otisfield native, his husband and their triplet boys have been quarantined in Madrid, Spain, for a week to avoid the spread of COVID-19.

“We’re all stuck at home for the most part,” he said in a phone interview.

Spain declared a partial shutdown of the country March 11, closing schools, day cares, and universities. On Saturday, a ban on nonessential travel kicked in. According to reporting by the BBC, as of Tuesday, there were 11,178 confirmed cases of COVID-19, second only to the pandemic in Italy.

“I have a connection to Italy as my husband’s Italian,” said Walton of Mirco Soffritti. “They’ve been going through this even before us . . . From the beginning, there was a lot of misconceptions about what is going on,” he said, and he believes those same misconceptions are spreading in the United States.

“I’m starting to see it a lot in the United States,” said Walton, who has lived in Spain for 11 years. “A lot of people are minimizing the danger and impact this could have, simply saying that this is a variation of the flu.

“The reality is that it’s more than that,” he said. “It moves incredibly fast, and it gets a lot of people very sick, very quickly . . . many people were saying ‘this is a Chinese thing. This is a Chinese flu.’ Unfortunately, that carried with it a little bit of xenophobia and a little bit of racism as to not take it seriously enough.”

Walton said in Spain stories slowly filtered in of people being infected with the virus, and some people chose to self-isolate and quarantine. Because COVID-19 often presents mild symptoms, most would stay home and not get treatment because their symptoms were not severe, and the concept of social distancing was practiced much too late, he said.

“From Spain, we were seeing these things, but we weren’t taking it as seriously, in my humble opinion, as people should have,” he said. “Then when it started coming to Spain, it was more a defiance . . . ‘We’re not going to change our lives. we’re going to show this virus that we can survive without going to drastic measures.'”

But that defiance started to fade once large amounts of people, particularly elderly people, started to die, he said.

Madrid has had the largest number deaths from the virus in the country, he said.

“People really started to pay attention to what this was, if not for themselves, for their elderly grandparents, parents, and other family members,” he said.

Walton keeps up-to-date with local Maine news and uses the Sun Journal as a tool during his work as an English teacher in Madrid.

“You guys are not prepared,” he said.

Walton’s biggest advice to family and friends back home is to stay calm.

“The big piece of advice is not to panic,” he said. “I know that’s very difficult, especially when you’re dealing with something unknown or something that seems completely foreign. Panicking solves nothing, and could start unnecessary problems.”

He also advised, “Listen to what medical professionals are saying, listen to the CDC . . . they’re going to be the one paying attention from a medical point of view, not a political point of view. When you do have to follow guidelines and restrictions, be consistent, even if it’s not for you, it could be for another person.”

If Europe is a snapshot of what Americans can expect from the outbreak, Walton said lockdowns could become common.

His advice for parents struggling to keep children at home happy is fall into a daily routine and stick with it.

To deal with the isolation, at 8 p.m. every night, Walton’s neighbors flock to windows and balconies to cheer and applause medical personnel, so loudly that the sound carries to local hospitals.

“I hope that in the days, weeks and maybe even months to come . . . (people) are able to tough it out responsibly,” he said.

filed under: