In Europe, COVID-19's second wave is on. Folks in Lisbon are acting like it's no big deal: rush hour traffic is jammed, parks and cafes are crowded, construction sites are active. But there are many signs that things are not 'normal': museums and tourists spots are still unattended, people are maintaining social distance and wearing masks, restaurant dining rooms are empty. CNN (Tara John) provides this perspective:
Europe is now reporting more daily infections than the United States, Brazil, or India – the countries that have been driving the global case count for months – as public apathy grows towards coronavirus guidelines. Several countries are seeing infection rates spiral again after a summer lull that saw measures to contain the virus and travel restrictions relaxed.
In the United Kingdom, for example, questions are being asked about whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to lift the country's lockdown in June was premature. Northern England's current high rates of Covid-19 are down to the fact that infections "never dropped as far in the summer as they did in the south," Jonathan Van-Tam, Britain's deputy chief medical officer, told a press conference on Monday.
Europe's seven-day moving average for new cases is marching toward six-figures, as cases surge in the UK, Spain, France, and Russia (graph appears to track all of continental Europe, not the EU). The US appears to be ready to follow, as its the seven-day average has been on a steady rise since hitting a low of around thirty-five thousand a month ago, and is back up over fifty-thousand.
But instead of taking stock of their failures and looking at a sustainable way forward, an Anglo-American narrative has grown, suggesting it is too late to try to emulate Asia-Pacific nations, said Dr. Tim Colbourn, a global health epidemiology and evaluation lecturer at University College London. Libertarian think-pieces, open letters and politicians across the Atlantic have advocated – with little scientific merit – for governments to "give up restrictions and let it [Covid-19] spread" for the sake of the economy, Colbourn said.
I'm also glad to be reminded of Taiwan's success – five hundred and thirty cases and seven deaths total. Places like Taiwan and New Zealand, which locked down hard and early, are basically back to business as usual:
In the United States, there were more new positive cases in the White House on October 2 than in the whole of Taiwan, after President Donald Trump became the second G7 leader (after Johnson) to test positive for Covid-19.
Seven months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic, life is closer to normal in the Asia-Pacific region thanks to the basic lessons of epidemiology: clear communication, quarantines, border controls, aggressive testing and contact tracing, Kenji Shibuya, the Director of the Institute for Population Health at King's College London, told CNN.
Nightclubs remain open in Taiwan, which also held its first full capacity arena show in August. Thousands were pictured visiting the Great Wall of China last week, months after an estimated 20,000 people packed into a New Zealand stadium for a rugby match.
Meanwhile, Portugal is reporting record seven-day case averages, passing the peaks of early April. Portugal (1,258.4) has also caught up to its US comparison-counterpart, Georgia (1,236.3). Portugal dropped out of the top-fifty a week ago, but has risen to forty-eighth, passing China. However, China still has more than twice as many deaths, and Georgia has more than triple.
"Anglo-American" businesses drive their governments, so these governments seem intent on keeping things 'open' in order to preserve economic gains. They have all missed their chances to prevent wide-spread infection. The key for governments over the next few months will be managing their economies while keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed. Just as they were in April, they are facing an abhorrent balancing act; suffering and death are reduced to variables in the economic calculus.
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