Europe: A surge in pandemic fatigue as Covid cases rocket
Europe is suffering through a brutal third wave of Covid-19, said Dr. Amir Khan in AlJazeera.com. On one day this week, France registered 66,000 new infections, triple the daily case rate in February. In Germany, new cases have nearly doubled to 16,000 a day. Across Europe as a whole, some 20,000 people are dying of the disease each week—more than during the first wave a year ago. What is driving this surge? A key factor is the more contagious Covid variant first detected in the U.K., which is now widespread across the Continent. In the northern Italian region of Lombardy, which was pummeled by the virus last spring, intensive-care units are again “filling up with patients, two-thirds of whom are thought to have been infected by the U.K. variant.” But the spike is also a result of the European Union’s dismal vaccine rollout; only 12 percent of residents have gotten at least one shot, compared with 46 percent in Britain and 32 percent in the U.S. To contain the latest Covid wave, areas of France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Poland, and other nations have been locked down. Health officials fear that “pandemic fatigue” will cause frustrated Europeans to give up and go back to unmasked socializing—further spreading the virus.
Part of the problem here in France is that we are a nation of vaccine skeptics, said Dr. Olivier Epaulard in Le Monde (France). Some of the hesitancy dates to the 1990s, when a rise in multiple sclerosis cases was erroneously linked to a hepatitis B shot. Then in 2009, many French suspected “collusion between government and industry” when the government bought 94 million doses of swine flu vaccine—more than enough for a population of 65 million—and most refused to get a jab. Even among French health-care workers, only 40 percent have opted to get a Covid shot, and the government is mulling whether to force them. At this rate, it will be 2023 before France reaches herd immunity. Many Germans are also leery of the vaccine and furious about restrictions, said Florentin Schumacher in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). In Baden-Württemberg, a particularly Covid-skeptical state that borders France, it can feel as though every other resident is bubbling with conspiracy theories about
Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the coming “corona dictatorship.”
A minority of Covid deniers are now embracing violence, said Fabian Eberhard in SonntagsBlick (Switzerland). At an antilockdown demonstration in Liestal last month, one protester “bloodied a journalist,” while right-wing hooligans “threw bottles at photographers and leftists.” At another protest in Bern, a demonstrator stabbed a police officer. And the refuseniks are getting bolder. In the early days of the pandemic, calls for violence were limited to a few anonymous online posts, but now they are “coming quite openly, posted by people using their real names” on Facebook and Twitter. Several blogs had to be taken offline entirely after they “called for the killing of federal lawmakers.” Swiss police say Covid extremists are already a major lawenforcement concern. How much worse will the threat become if the pandemic drags on another year?