Covid resurgence across Europe even in countries that managed the first wave so well it did not de-facto happen – like Czechia and Slovakia – is in part a consequence of exactly that. The governments got the impression that everything is over and experts were no longer listened to. Common people, who never were used to listening to experts anyway, were glad to hear the soothing messages from governments because they told them what they wanted to hear.
“It is OK now, you can go on a holiday, you can go to a bar, you can mingle all you want”.
And let’s not forget the toxic influence of American right-wing politics spreading throughout the world.
When our then health minister and his expert advisers said at the end of August that there should be introduced some mild preventative measures to assure the disease does not get out of hand, the strongest opposition came from our right-wing parties, who still propagate the long ago falsified idea of trickle-down reaganomics. They objected that the minister is fearmongering and that businesses suffer as a consequence and all that. Oh, and also the old chestnut that it is just like the flu and we do not do any such measures against flu either.
Two months and two new health ministers later, and Czechia is eleventh worldwide in infections per capita, and only second among countries over 10 million. Finally, we surpassed even the USA, as our right-wing parties wished we did, only in a metric even shittier than wealth inequality. And now we have not only businesses closed, we also have a curfew – and the talk is that even stricter measures might be needed because the virus does not seem to be slowing down that much.
Unfortunately, the only measures against a pandemic that are adequate are those that are perceived as too much by the general public. Unless the grumblers grumble, not enough is being done – a lesson learned in the past that will be forgotten in the future when the next pandemic hits.
Sadly your situation is all too familiar here, we haven’t had a change in Health Minister, but the scientists were saying weeks ago we needed to reintroduce more restrictive measure and the idiot Johnson was poo pooing them, He has finally changed his tune, but in the meantime of course the virus has been spreading rapidly. It’s almost like the experts know what they are talking about. Who’d have thought it?
Just wait to see how effective humanity’s response to global climate change is.
Same. We still have Covidiots protesting everything and even scientists and doctors claiming that we mustn’t have tough regulations now. Their most prominent dude is Prof. Streek who’s been downplaying the whole shit for months now and people love to listen to him, because they like what he says. While poor Prof. Drosten who never wanted either fame nor spotlight is like Cassandra: always right and never listened to.
Here the bar and nigh club owners haven’t been too happy about the restrictions on when those establishments can be open and serve alcohol (now it’s legal to serve alcohol until 22.00 and closing time is 23.00), but I’m guessing that curfews or total shutdowns would make them even less happy. We have manged to break the exponential spreading of the disease after a big second wave here in Finland. Apart from the mask recommendation, restrictions have been less stringent and more regionally targeted in the autumn. Testing has increased significantly.
I think a part of the reason for the success may have been that university students have started to do social distancing better after the first-year student (fuksi in Finnish university slang, pHuksi for chemists and phux in Swedish) parties are past.