Europe Faces Second Wave of Coronavirus
German, France report record new cases, impose tighter restrictions.
European governments are imposing sweeping measures as the continent faces a second wave of the Chinese coronavirus.
France and Germany have enacted nationwide restrictions, and the United Kingdom is tittering on the edge of a second lockdown, European media report.
France mobilized police force and declared a state of ‘national emergency’ as the country on Thursday registered 30,000 new cases, a record daily total.
“President Emmanuel Macron put 18 million residents in nine regions, including Paris, under a curfew starting Saturday. The country will deploy 12,000 police officers to enforce it,” the Associated Press reported.
Neighboring Germany announced new restrictions as the Chinese pandemic hit record numbers since March.
“Germany posted over 6,000 new cases. Levels like this have not been seen since the start of the pandemic,” German state broadcaster DW News reported. “Germany’s previous record daily increase was 6,294 on March 28. The country also reported 33 new deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 9,710.”
Across the Channel, the United Kingdom saw a similar spike, with government advisors talking of a second lockdown.
“A second national lockdown is a possibility but we have to do what we can to avoid that at all costs,” a leading scientist has said,” the London Times reported earlier this week. “Peter Horby, who chairs a government advisory group, said that the country was in a precarious position as coronavirus cases and hospital admissions continued to rise.”
“European business braces for second wave,” London-based Financial Times wrote. “Companies across region resigned to more disruption as infections dash recovery hopes.”
Germany’s DW News on Thursday reported the country’s response:
The German Foreign Ministry has declared all of France, the Netherlands, Malta and Slovakia to be high-infection areas and has warned against nonessential travel to those countries. Official travel warnings are set to come into force on Saturday.
The announcement came after the French border area with Germany was declared a coronavirus risk area for the first time since mid-June by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the federal government agency for infectious diseases.
The news comes as many Germans have been panic-buying and doing border runs for commodities between the French city of Strasbourg and the German town of Kehl, located on the River Rhine, just 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from Strasbourg.
Cars jammed the Europabrücke, the bridge that crosses the Rhine between the two locations, to do a spot of last-minute shopping.
Unwilling to challenge Communist China for its role in the global pandemic outbreak, Europe is looking for scapegoats closer to home. France launched a major investigation into its handling of the pandemic, raiding houses of top government ministers and officials, including the current health minister and former prime minister.
“French police have raided the homes of senior government and health officials as part of an investigation into their handling of the coronavirus pandemic,” BBC reported. “Health Minister Olivier Véran and the director of the national health agency, Jérôme Salomon, are among those whose properties were searched on Thursday.”
Earlier this year, the European Union reportedly watered down a report over Beijing’s alleged disinformation campaign in the wake of the outbreak.
Amid a surge in new cases of the Wuhan virus and the country’s crumbling health system, French health workers staged a strike in Paris on Thursday.
“Several hundred health workers took to the streets of Paris on Thursday afternoon to protest against conditions in French hospitals, as the number of new coronavirus cases surges across the country,” the news channel France24 reported.
Given Europe’s economic woes, European leaders are scrambling to avoid a second lockdown. The EU leaders, particularly Germany’s Angela Merkel, were lauded by mainstream media for their handling of the pandemic, often contrasted with the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Angela Merkel’s scientific background could save Germany,” The Atlantic magazine hoped in April. “The chancellor’s rigor in collating information, her honesty in stating what is not yet known, and her composure are paying off.”
“Her approach stood in stark contrast to the fraught political divisions in the United States… where … authorities have often been at odds with President Trump, who has made forceful but erratic predictions about the virus,” the New York Times told its readers in April.
“Germany’s coronavirus response is a master class in science communication,” CNBC opined in July.
Months of Trump-bashing and Merkel-swooning seems premature now as one looks at the Europeans battling a second wave. Besides, President Trump’s U.S. economy is a better place than Europe led by Merkle and her junior partner Macron.
Economic data suggests that Europe, especially the euro currency zone, which includes France and Germany, fared worse during the outbreak than America.
“The eurozone’s gross domestic product fell 40.3% on an annual basis, far exceeding the 32.9% contraction in the U.S. economy” between April-to-June quarter, the Wall Street Journal confirmed.
‘Lockdowns and curfews as Europe fights second wave’
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However, like the American States that will no longer play Fauci’s game, the death rates are rather low. We are now at the juncture where deaths by deferred medical care and suicides because of Covid are having an international impact.
So, the draconian lockdowns didn’t work??? Who would have guessed?
Hmm, Sweden?
Remember all summer when the Left was shrieking that the Swedes were going to kill everyone with their crazy no lockdown strategy? Now the virus is over in Sweden, but surging everywhere else. Who woulda thunk it.
Why even Arkansas knew they did not work.
Duh.
We should be careful to be accurate. Cases in Sweden have been rising for one month now, with a daily new case, 7-day average of 696 cases vs 150 a month ago. At the peak of their “first wave” they were experiencing just over 1,000 new daily cases. Deaths, on the other hand, have remained in the single digits since mid-July.
I’m not convinced that France ever really had its first true wave. Like Montana, they locked down and delayed the inevitable (NOT flattened the curve). They are currently at 20,000 daily new cases and almost 90 daily deaths.
For comparison, Spain is truly getting a second wave. At their Spring peak they had around 8,000 daily cases, and almost 1,000 daily deaths. Currently, they have around 10,000 new daily cases, and 110 deaths. Either the low hanging fruit has pretty much died off, or the disease is getting less lethal.
Or somebody is sending infectious patients into old folks homes to clear out their crowded rooms. Not that Socialized Medicine would ever do that…
I have read articles that in France, they are requiring MOTHERS IN LABOR to wear face masks. To me, that borders on criminal abuse. The healthcare workers will not even enter the room unless she has a mask on. Forget that a woman in labor has a hard time breathing as it is, make her wear a stupid mask at that time? If you are so worried about her expressing viral loads on you, at least give her an oxygen mask, don’t make her rebreathe her own carbon monoxide while she walks the valley of death to bring life into this world.
The article also said that interventions (forceps, c-sections, etc) have gone up because moms cannot breath enough to do their number one job of pushing.
Why not put them on canned air, that would allow them to breath easily? It is not perfect, but would eliminate the resistance of pulling air through the mask filter.
Another possibility is to have an air filtration system taking in air near the woman delivering and passing that air through a HEPA filter or exhausting it outside.
Spaceballs!
A global flood of garbage data is driving most of these insane authoritarian responses. For a clearer look at the data, a few interesting sources:
https://lockdownsceptics.org/
https://twitter.com/FatEmperor
https://twitter.com/OBusybody
This pattern is exactly what we would expect. A rise in cases as temperatures fall. People stay indoors more often and in closer contact. I am certainly not an epidemiological expert, but I can certainly look at and interpret data.
This is not an unexpected development. This is exactly the pattern anticipated for Europe, particularly N Europe. Anyone who tells you differently is either ignorant or deceitful.
Simply do a search for temperate climate and influenza spread. Lots of studies. Lots of data. All pointing to the same conclusion.
It does not, however, explain the spread in warm, humid climates, or observation of distribution in controlled spaces. The likely explanation is that the transmission modes have been mischaracterized.
n.n,
You are correct that observations about N Europe which is temperate, don’t extrapolate to tropical climate.
The bottom line here is look at the charts of past influenza spread. The charts in the books all point to exactly what we have seen with Rona. In temperate and tropical climate.
Are there differences in Rona v past influenza in terms of aerosol spread? Maybe. In any event people clustering together indoors whether from outside heat or outside cold the simple answer is more close contact =more transmission.
Is our response to Rona the largest public health mobilization in terms of restrictions in modern history? Absolutely yes.
IMO, all we have done is extend the timeframe of transmission by our efforts. At the end of Rona most of us will have been exposed. Some of us likely had a preexisting resistance in T cell from previous similar outbreaks.
If we held our public policy consistent with public health ‘experts’ advice they gave in Feb/early March our current actions would be different. My contention is the experts are not infallible, they made clear errors. That isn’t to say ignore them, but simply realize that their opinions are just that; opinions. They are not holy writ.
We are 3/4 of a year into this bug, we knew in February that fecal contamination was a material part of how it was spread and shed from people and we’ve lied to the public about it for the entire ****ing time. I pointed out that “White man sanitation good” was likely to be material. Well, it’s only material and only attenuates the spread if you pay attention to it and model public policy on that basis. We did not and that was malicious so as to be able to call health-care workers “heroes” and to not impugn certain other ethnic groups.
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
Information about masks and efficacy
Particle character and transmission mode matter.
Zelenko tell-all: ‘Mortality dropped 8-fold with use of those two drugs’
Interview with Dr. Zelenko and Professor Risch
Great Barrington Declaration
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Any idea regarding what they were looking for in the search of officials homes? Simply window dressing?
Scapegoats.
Surprise! Delaying is not curing.
Our local hospital has 1 Chinese Death Kooties admission at the moment.
Deaths and admissions are not keeping pace with “cases” and haven’t done since the spike started in August.
Why do these fools care about cases? They’re irrelevant.
I have no idea what the French hospital workers are protesting since hospitalizations and deaths don’t track cases anymore so there’s nothing for them to do.
We still don’t clearly know the relationship between dying OF the Chinese flu and dying WITH the Chinese flu. The Powers That Be won’t give us that information because it interferes with their narrative. The hints we have of asymptomatic cases are all we have – hints.
We will practice the basic hygiene procedures we all learned in sixth grade (well, until they stopped teaching it) that everybody has been reminded of so stridently and go about our rat killin’. Neither The Bride nor I intend to cower in fear, being confident this life isn’t the only one.
.
Bride, means you are probably under 40, and the risk of dying is very low. If you want your elders to be around, be careful not to expose them.
“Unwilling to challenge Communist China for its role in the global pandemic outbreak, Europe is looking for scapegoats closer to home… French police have raided the homes of senior government and health officials as part of an investigation into their handling of the coronavirus pandemic”
What did they expect to find? Cauldrons of bat soup?
Truly, truly, a mental disorder.
Absolutely! A pure exercise of unfettered power based on the “science” that they have the power to do it.
They should all eat bat soup, better yet, bat s&!t.
Did you here the latest, Covid test swabs spread covid./s
Darn auto correct, hear, not here.
Didn’t the hallowed WHO just say that shutdowns don’t work? Did I misread that ? Have the Europeans also pulled out of WHO just like Trump?
Deaths and case fatality rate are a fraction of spring’s.
Treatment has improved greatly, though Pharma has been scheming to shift treatment from inexpensive drugs with well known side effects to new drugs costing big bucks.
The point of the original isolation and lockdown routine was to inhibit the spread of the disease. This was important because of the fear that our health system would be overwhelmed by a sudden influx of seriously ill patients.
As we now know, at least here in the US that simply didn’t happen. Two possibilities; (1) the efforts to slow the progress of the pandemic were successful, or (2) it wasn’t going to happen anyway, isolation/lockdown or no.
The basic problem still exists. The capacity of our hospitals and etc. is finite. We want the number of patients to be kept to some level they can handle. But until these facilities start to be submerged in sick people, there’s little point in trying to manage a disease which can be treated but can’t (for the moment) be either cured or prevented.
Conclusion—the measure of success of isolation/lockdown is not statistics on infection rates or patient deaths, but rather hospital capacity. (1) If isolation/lockdown works, we can slack off a bit until our hospitals start getting a bit crowded. (2) If isolation/lockdown is useless, we don’t have any control over spread and can minimize economic disaster if we just drop it all.
Of course there’s no way to tell if (1) or (2) describes reality, as governments seem to insist that it’s (1) whether or not it actually is. Even so, hospital capacity is the only useful criterion of success.