The Coronavirus pandemic seems to be a never-ending story. A continuous stop and go with moments of hope and rapid relapses. A virus that taught the common man the word variant. Of course, because when it seemed almost all over, the Delta variant came out, especially in Europe. A more contagious variant than the previous ones. The only luck not to go back to the initial nightmare is that now the vaccines work and people are being vaccinated.
Certainly, however, that the scientific world, once again is divided, from aperturists with or without a mask, to those who instead would like to close everything.
In Europe, in anticipation of the tourist season, between May and July, countries have begun to loosen restrictions, albeit once again in no particular order.
Millions of people have begun to take off their masks as a moment of liberation. A kind of Independence Day from the virus like the American one of July 4th
After all this “free all”, however, cases have started to rise again: 38,000 new infections every day across the continent (with Russia and the United Kingdom in the lead). Now there are more than 130,000 and then we start with the restrictions, including the much-hated curfew.
Without having learned anything from previous mistakes, each country is thus responding in its own way to the new wave.
While England opened the whole country yesterday, a curfew has been imposed again in Cantabria, Catalonia or Portugal. Holland, as well as elsewhere, has closed its discos, a symbol of liberation. In France, the obligation to wear a mask outdoors has been introduced in many areas in the French areas affected by the variant, such as the province of the Eastern Pyrenees, on the border with Catalonia.
“The virus is alive and looking for survival strategies – confirms François Heisbourg, consultant of the International Institute of Strategic Studies – but the EU has limited expertise in health policy and this of Covid-19 is something that will not change quickly, much less where health policy is regional and not national “.
France responded to the return of the pandemic in a centralist and presidential manner. President Emmanuel Macron presented to the French the new measures for vaccination: the first is the obligation of vaccination for health personnel, already applied in Italy while in Germany the obligation has been refused.
The second measure is that without a green pass you will not be able to enter bars, cinemas, planes or long-distance trains.
The French answer is unique as a whole, not used anywhere in the world. Other countries have opted for disseminated information. Others, like Greece, for a check for young people who get vaccinated to spend on culture and holidays.
The French method is different: it obliges to be vaccinated and confines those who do not want to do it.
It is now recognized that 90% of the population needs to be vaccinated to stop the spread. Now in the EU, only 50% of the population is vaccinated.
After the speech of the French president, many people went to the streets to protest. 18,000 people in Paris, 96,000 in the rest of France, but the effect of the appeal was positive because 2.6 million French have booked the vaccine on the Doctolib website.
Almost 900,000 doses were injected in one day. But what to do? Reintroduce restrictions, as is being done in Portugal and Spain, or abolish them like England? Inciting people to be vaccinated with the threat of not being able to go to public places, as in France, or by persuasion, as in Germany? No government has the right answer because it is too dependent on public opinion or the political opposition of the moment.
The truth is that everyone should be pushed to vaccinate as it is the only way out of the pandemic at the moment.
Instead, some doubts arise on the Covid certificate which does not seem to be the right tool. It will be very difficult to put checks in bars, neighborhoods, restaurants. Even now it is not even easy to control the borders between countries.
The only certainty is the vaccine that everyone has in common and that everyone has available in Europe. Only in this way will we be able to free ourselves as soon as possible from the virus and its variants but many still have not understood it.