Danes and Dutch shut down for a month

Danes and Dutch shut down for a month

News

norman lebrecht

December 18, 2021

The Danish Government has ordered a month-long, anti-Covid closure of places of entertainment.

Royal Danish Opera will close from from tomorrow (Dec 19) until January 17th.

The Dutch are expected to announce imminently a 5pm curfew and closure of performance venues.

The UK is under pressure to invoke tougher measures this week.

Comments

  • Richard Cheese says:

    I have full confidence that these measures plus a third and possibly a fourth dose will be sufficient to control the spread of this dastardly virus. Get your shots folks.

    • Peter says:

      I have a feeling what the first two shots could’t do, the third won’t do either.

      Fight for your freedom, folks. It’s taken away in front of your eyes.

      • A Pianist says:

        Vaccine failure is what is right before our eyes. Why on earth would a booster shot engineered on the extinct pre-alpha spike do anything against omicron. There is no plausible biological mechanism. Sure the booster raises antibody titers. Antibody titers don’t mean a thing if the antibodies are ineffective.

    • May says:

      You’re being sarcastic, right?

  • John Borstlap says:

    In the Netherlands, a hard lockdown has just been announced till 14th January – everything closed except ‘life line shops’.

    It seems grossly exaggerated in relation to the real threat.

    • Guest says:

      Which is?

      • John Borstlap says:

        The new virus variant ‘omicron’ does not produce symptoms as serious as the delta variant or the original covid virus. Omicron is replacing delta very fast and this reduces the pandemic threat, together with mass vaccination and herd imunity.

        • Tweettweet says:

          Figures from Denmark show that hospitalisation of the omicron variant seems to be half of the Delta variant – Note that figures are still to low to draw solid conclusions.

          However, since omicron spreads at an incredibly fast pace, there is a risk that hospitals will be flooded.

          E.g.: population of 10 million people, 1% is infected with the Delta variant at the same time, so 100,000 people are infected. Let’s say that 2% of them is hospitalized, i.e. 2,000 patients.

          The omicron variant spreads much more quickly, therefore 10% is infected with the omicron variant –> 1 million people are infected. At the same time, 1% of them is hospitalized, i.e. 10,000 patients.

          With the full ICUs in The Netherlands, I completely understand that the government is taking action (finally about on time!)

  • Marko Kassenaar says:

    Not a curfew in NL, but a lockdown: only ‘essential shops’ are open. Restaurants and cafes are allowed to sell take-out food and drink. Everything else, including concert halls, closed, but people are allowed outside.

  • anon says:

    Lockdowns never worked against COVID-19 in the first place, but Omicron is so infectious and so largely asymptomatic that lockdowns are even more useless now than they were in early-2020. Given that Omicron is milder than previous variants, there is even less justification to inflict the enormous harms perpetrated by lockdowns. There is no escaping the reality that the vast majority of the European population WILL be exposed to Omicron within the next month, if not already. Better to let it take its course among the general population, which has a high level of immunity (whether from prior infection or vaccination or both), and concentrate on enabling the vulnerable to shield.

    But of course, the lockdown fanatics are determined to vindicate their moronic strategy at any cost, and what better way than to impose tough measures and take the credit when infections go down, as will probably happen within weeks REGARDLESS of any measures (already, the Omicron wave in South Africa is on the way down, which shows how quickly it fizzles out, even in the absence of significant restrictions). And if infections go up again, or keep going up, they will bleat (without any proof) that it could have been worse without their restrictions. In other words, the lockdown fanatics’ twisted logic (and infinite capacity to downplay parts of the world without lockdown restrictions) will claim to be vindicated regardless of what happens next.

    Basta!

    • John Borstlap says:

      Ironically, all of this is very true.

    • Tweettweet says:

      No, there is a serious risk of the ICUs (which are already full in THe Netherlands) will be overflooded, since the spreading of the virus works exponentially. That means that there is a risk that too many people at the same time are infected.

      We can’t compare Europe with South Africa, the population is very different. I’d rather compare the figures with Denmark, and those figures are not very positive.

  • PS says:

    Netherlands Announces New Hard Lockdown For No Reason (Tarl Warwick)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGC2DZ0MwP4

  • MOST READ TODAY: