Europe COVID Ridden, Locking Down

"It's like a luxury prison. It's definitely limited freedom and for me it's not great psychologically."

"People were promised that if they got vaccinated they would be able to lead a normal life, but now that's not true."

Sascha Jamkovyi, food sector entrepreneur, Vienna

Pedestrians walk at the city centre during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, as Austria's government imposed a general lockdown from Monday, in Salzburg, Austria, November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Lukas Barth

Austria now is the first country in Western Europe reimposing lockdown since inoculations first began in the country. Non-essential shops, bars and cafes are now shuttered as caseloads surge, making the continent's leaders fearful of a second straight winter where the entire continent will be in deep freeze, so to speak. Tighter restrictions are also on the way in Germany in an effort to control a record-setting wave of infections.

Europe is now again the epicentre of the global pandemic that caused lockdowns first in March of 2020. The imposition of new restrictions and new vaccine mandates are expected to affect more countries struggling with rising caseloads, marking the approach of the second full year of spreading infections since the SARS-CoV-2 viruses that causes COVID-19 first emerged in China.

Confirming her position on the need to begin another closing of society, Chancellor Merkel informed leaders of her conservative CDU party: "We are in a highly dramatic situation. What is in place now is not sufficient" to dampen rising COVID case numbers. An urgent message from Jens Spahn the German health minister for people to be vaccinated, followed his confidential assurance of certainty that by winter's end everyone in the country would be "vaccinated, recovered or dead"; a message geared to spell out dire consequences.

Workers dismantle a booth in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, which, like Saxony, has cancelled its Christmas markets to help control Covid-19. Photograph: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images

 

Austrians are being urged to work from home if at all possible; warning that restaurants, theatres and non-essential shops would be closed for a period of ten days. Citing a limited number of reasons for leaving home, such as attending school, going out to a workplace, shopping for essential products, or walking outdoors for exercise, Austrian authorities have made it clear that normal life habits must temporarily undergo change.

As of February 1st, in Austria, vaccinations will become compulsory, within a public where many remain skeptical of vaccinations, a suspicion of medical science encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, third largest in parliament. Some 40,000 protesters were out on the streets in Vienna. In Brussels and across the Netherlands, protests turned violent over the weekend.

Unvaccinated people were banned from services, including going out to pubs and cafes and restaurants in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. In Austria a third of the population remain unvaccinated, one of the highest unvaccinated rates in Western Europe, a situation that authorities blame for the COVID wave the country is currently struggling under.

 

Abandoned tables of a closed restaurant are seen in a street as the Austrian government imposed fourth national coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown in Vienna, Austria, November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Despite the imposition of a lockdown on the unvaccinated last week, daily infections continue rising far above the previous peak, leading to a full lockdown this week. In Berlin and other parts of Germany Christmas markets have opened for the first time in two years, but in states bordering Austria and the Czech Republic with Germany's highest case loads, stricter rules prevail with the cancellation of Christmas markets and barring the unvaccinated from restaurants and bars, along with night-time curfews.

Vaccination rates are lower still in Eastern European countries where some of the highest death tolls per capita in the world have been experienced. In countries like Bulgaria and Romania, hospitals are overrun with serious cases of COVID-19, the surging caseloads leaving medical personnel in a quandary of hopelessness over vaccine hesitancy.

Demonstrators protest against government COVID-19 restrictions during anniversary celebrations of the 1989 Velvet Revolution ending communist rule, Prague, Nov. 17, 2021.  AP Photo/Petr David Josek

The COVID State of the Union

"There are continued increases, but not to the level that we've seen in previous surges here in the North-east."

"I'm seeing some modelling to suggest that peak won't occur until late September, early October -- but of course we don't know for sure."

"Multiple factors challenge our ability to predict what's going to happen next."

"Certainly opening school without having vaccinations available for kids under 12 also potentially will influence the course."

Dr.Roy Gulick, chief of infectious diseases, Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian hospital

 

"I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea."

"We've done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis [vaccinations]."

"I think there's a reasonable chance that the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines could get FDA clearance for kids under 12 before the upcoming holiday season."

Dr.Anthony Fauci, U.S. infectious disease expert

An empty ICU bed SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital in Lake Saint Louis. (photo by Armond Feffer).

Amidst key areas of concern in the United States over the bedeviling Delta wave, parts of the American Northeast, according to experts, may be closing in on the peak of the latest COVID wave. It is anticipated that in weeks to come hospitalizations and deaths will continue to mount. In Connecticut and Massachusetts cases appear to have topped out, reflecting a consensus of forecsts published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In New York and New Jersey however, infection rates are expected to increase. The Northeast has been ground down since mid-July by the effects of the COVID-19 wave that was first seen in Arkansas and Missouri and which went on to fuel record hospitalizations in Florida. In every state in the Northeast, daily hospital admissions are rising, according to the Department of Health and Human Services data. 

Leading indicators -- given that the rates of infection remain distinctly lower than those seen in early Delta-variant hot spots -- appear to suggest the region may crest before attaining Florida-like levels of viral prevalence. Nationwide however, cases remain projected to continue rising for several weeks. The original epicentre of the U.S. pandemic, New York city, has its effective reproduction number (Rt -- an estimate of how many new infections arise out of a single COVID carrier) indicating sustainable declines in case numbers may be approachable soon.

The Rt in Manhattan is estimated to have decreased to 1.0; and at such time that it falls below that level the expectation is that cases will decrease in the near future. The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn have somewhat steeper Rt rates, revealed by covidestim, a project including representatives from Yale School of Public Health, Harvard's T.H.Chan School of Public Health and Stanford Medicine.

A record 5,048 new infections was reported two days earlier in Mississippi, signalling that the worst per capita outbreak in the country shows no signs of abating in a state with the nation's lowest vaccination rate. Mississip0i reported a record for deaths earlier in the week, with health officials reporting 20,000 students quarantined with the virus, or for exposure.

 

Francisco Rosales, 9, in the intensive care unit at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. The day before he was supposed to start fourth grade, Francisco was admitted to the hospital due to severe COVID  AP

 

Florida is preparing to withhold funding from two school districts that have mandated mask-wearing for students, in defiance of an executive order signed by Florida Governor DeSantis barring facial coverings to be required.

"It is important to remember that this issue is about ensuring local school board members, elected politicians, follow the law."

"We cannot have government officials pick and choose what laws they want to follow."

Richard Corcoran, Commissioner of Education, Florida Department of Education