Ruminations: The Third Wave Pandemic in Europe

"There are two ways at this crossroads: vaccination or lockdown."
"Every day we face this challenge and this choice. I am totally against lockdown... because of the economy."
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky

"Of course, not all that needed to be done was done for informing and explaining the inevitability and importance of vaccination."
"But at the same time, citizens of our country need to take a more responsible position and get vaccinated."
Dmitry Peskove, spokesman, President Vladimir Putin

"[In] the UK the strategy has been very much focused on letting vaccinations do all the work. And I don't think that's going to be enough."
"[It's a dangerous strategy that relies on the unvaccinated, like children, getting infected to create a] level of overall population immunity from natural infection and vaccination."
"The problem with that, of course, is that it not only allows for some unacceptably high level of hospitalization and death, but also that it may not work."
'[Western Europe won't] reach the crisis levels that we saw in the past -- with field hospitals being set up -- [because] vaccines have definitely changed the game and in that sense there should be a lot of reason for optimism."
Dr. Peter Drobac, global health expert, University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, England

"[Europe needs to not] sleepwalk [its way to lockdowns and deaths of last winter]."
"We don't know what the epidemic period will be in two months, three months' time...we are going to have to be a little cautious ... a little careful."
Mike Ryan, executive director, health emergencies program, WHO

A health care and nursing assistant stands in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at Essen University Hospital, Germany.

Eastern Europe is soon to surpass coronavirus cases totalling 20 million, even as the region is trying to come to grips with the worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic, as their efforts at inoculating their populations fall steadily behind. Eastern Europe can reluctantly boast the lowest vaccination numbers in the whole of Europe, fewer than half the population to date receiving a single dose of COVID-19 vaccination.

At the top of the region's vaccination rates Hungary counts 62 percent of its population with at least one dose, while Ukraine's population has received a mere 19 percent of a first dose, according to Our World in Data. With the steady rise of new infections, the region now averages over 83,700 new cases daily. With 4 percent of the world's population, Eastern Europe has approximately 20 percent of all new global cases.

People protest against Covid-19 restrictions in Bulgaria on October 20 as cases skyrocket in the region.

And as sad and sorry statistics go, there's more, with Russia, Ukraine and Romania reporting the most deaths in the world. The rises are driven in many countries across Europe not only by low inoculation rates, but increasing measures to allow social gathering indoors when restrictions were being lifted and now that winter is setting in, that rise in COVID-19 infections will only keep increasing.

While infections continue their steady rise, social reaction has seen many people in the region increasingly insecure, uncertain whether to continue being defiant about refusing vaccines, and at the other end of the spectrum feeling profound regret for not having agreed to vaccination. In various cities, protests have arisen against mandatory certificates that limit access to indoor public spaces to those who have been fully vaccinated.

In the European Union, the bloc average of distrust of health systems stands at 18 percent, but in the eastern sector it is one in three people in the EU's east that express no trust, according to a European Commission Eurobarometer poll. Russia has over 40 percent of all new cases in the entire region, 120 people testing positive every five minutes, placing the nation's health care system through great strain.

There, 36 percent of the population has received one dose of vaccine. Leading the government to declare that the capital Moscow will shut down all businesses next week with the exclusion of essential stores, in hopes of stemming the disease spread.