Here in Belgium we’re moving again in semi-lockdown because of corona. It means that as of Monday all bars en restaurants will be closed. You can only meet up with one person. No Christmas markets, … on top of that it’s getting colder, days shorter. I think we’re all in for a long winter, but at least we’Re all in it together.
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Yeah, I think winter is going to be tough this year.
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Here (your neighbours) the same…semi-lockdown. Closed bars, restaurants. People cant play sports, are recommended to work from home. My dancing continues for now, and schools are still open, but i wonder for how long.
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Our provincial government excused schools from having to obey the same restrictions as everyone else because it would be too expensive to distance kids properly – that would require hiring enough teachers. We were told not to worry, the numbers in schools would be just fine…
Whoops. The thing is, it really only got cold and snowy this past week. I estimate there are maybe two weeks of open window and outside phys-ed weather left. Once everyone is stuck indoors breathing the same crappy recirculated air at 20% humidity, well, hello second wave. I’ll be amazed if schools remain open past X-mas.
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UK is entering restrictions again too. Not a total lockdown…yet anyway
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You’re absolutely right. Our school district just started having the elementary kids go to school. They think it’s ok because they don’t change classrooms. I think it’ll be a clusterf***.
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The economic, political, and educational effects due to the ineptitude of implementing these lockdowns is going to reverberate for decades. Scary time.
There is some interesting data out of Sweden. They didn’t lock down, but their numbers don’t seem as bad as the neighboring countries that did. There is something to be said about the differences of how each country collects pandemic data and the health of each country’s population though.
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Sweden has about 10 times as many coronavirus related deaths as Denmark and about 20 times as many as Norway and Finland. They still have a higher daily coronavirus infection rate than Norway and Finland and a similar one to Denmark. Their restrictions are also much more similar to the rest of Scandinavia at this point. Please at least try to fact check before you make wild claims.
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I have a feeling another lockdown is imminent where I live, too. Our total number of cases is still relatively low but the rate at which that number is increasing is getting exponentially higher each day.
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“How did that work out? Sweden’s overall COVID-19 numbers look pretty bad. According to Worldometer’s tallies, Sweden so far has seen 576 COVID-19 deaths per 1 million people, which is much higher than the rates in three neighboring countries that imposed more sweeping restrictions on social and economic activity: Denmark (108), Finland (61), and Norway (49). Yet several other European countries have fared worse than Sweden despite lockdowns, including Belgium (853), Italy (587), Spain (623), and the U.K. (611). And in the United States, where all but a few governors imposed broad lockdowns last spring, per capita COVID-19 deaths (570 per million) are about the same as in Sweden.”
Those are not neighboring countries. They’re separated by a sea and are much, much more densely populated countries with much larger cities. It is not surprising that they have more difficulty controlling the virus. Comparing Sweden to those countries to score some political point about coronavirus restrictions not working is completely misleading. The effect of the lockdowns is clearly visible when you look to the countries Sweden is actually comparable to.
So I should have been more specific. Not trying to score political points, just make sense.
The long-term consequences of the lockdowns might be worse as they’re implemented right now in most places. We’ll see. They work early on when the spread is limited, and if you listen to what epidemiologists like Knut Wittkowsky say, we locked down when it was too late to stop the spread. They do keep the healthcare systems from being overwhelmed, but otherwise given the nature of the virus everyone in the area under the curve is likely eventually to get infected unless a vaccine comes along before that time.
I don’t disagree with the long-term consequences possibly being worse. But the effect of the lockdowns is obvious here in Scandinavia.
If by we you mean the US, then yes, you reacted to this virus in a pretty ineffective way. But countries in Europe that started their lockdowns earlier were able to pretty much stop the spread for a while. Also, it’s worth mentioning again that if you’re interested in how Sweden is doing now compared to other European countries, keep in mind that they’ve changed their strategy considerably since the lockdowns started.
Agreed, also important to mention again is the disparity in different ways of each country’s data collection and their populations’ health.
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