Europe: COVID-19 surges across the Continent

In this issue of The Week. If you have trouble viewing this email, [read the online version]( . NEWS In this issue of The Week --------------------------------------------------------------- Dear newsletter reader, We thought you'd appreciate this special preview from the latest issue of The Week magazine, where you'll find everything you need to know about the most important stories in news, business, technology, and culture. Today's preview comes from the Best columns: Europe section. If you like what you read you can [try 6 Risk-Free issues of The Week](. Europe: COVID-19 surges across the Continent [The Week cover]( "Europe is now a gigantic test tube," said Constantino Sakellarides in Público (Portugal). With COVID-19 cases spiking back to their springtime highs all over the Continent, countries are once again enacting restrictions: curtailing the opening hours of bars and restaurants, mandating masks in public, limiting gatherings. Every nation has a different threshold for taking action to stem the spread. Germany reinstated severe coronavirus restrictions when its cumulative 14-day infection rate hit 200 new cases per 100,000 residents. In France, the magic number was 706 cases per 100,000 residents, in Belgium 1,786 cases. We will soon find out if Portugal, which has 710 new infections per 100,000 people, waited too long. "The situation is serious and more critical than what we experienced in the first wave of the pandemic," Prime Minister António Costa said last week in announcing new lockdowns in the worst-hit areas. There's a curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weekdays, while on weekends residents can go out only in the mornings and must be home by 1 p.m. Austria has gone even further, said Gerald John in Der Standard (Austria). We have one of the highest infection rates in Europe — 1,043 cases per 100,000 residents — and the government has ordered a three-week national lockdown, closing schools and workplaces. Everyone is to stay put, and then everyone is to be tested for COVID-19 before Christmas. Such drastic steps are necessary because officials bungled their response to the pandemic. They urged Austrians to resume a normal life when the first wave waned, and even as the infection rate was exploding in late October, Health Minister Rudolf Anschober "assured us that we were a long way from needing a second lockdown." Rather than encouraging vigilance, he "lulled people into a sense of safety." Young people in particular think they are invincible, said Serge Enderlin in Le Monde (France). In the Swiss city of Lausanne, on the night before a partial lockdown took effect on Nov. 4, hundreds of people packed into a bar and sang AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" at the top of their lungs. That was "a superspreader event," and such careless behavior explains why Swiss morgues are now overflowing. Even Sweden is implementing tough measures to contain the disease, said Olle Lonnaeus in Sydsvenskan (Sweden). Officials had boasted that our soft-touch approach would keep case numbers low and our economy thriving through fall and winter. Yet Sweden is now faring worse than Denmark, Norway, and Finland in terms of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths; indeed, with 6,000 COVID-19 fatalities, Sweden has Europe's fifth-highest per capita death rate. The Swedish government has been hamstrung by the constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly and makes it impossible to enforce a total lockdown. This week, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven exploited a "plague loophole" to limit public gatherings to eight people. This applies to religious services, sporting events, and concerts — but not to shopping malls or private parties. Lofven has no authority to limit those, so all he can do is encourage people to act safely. As Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren puts it, "We cannot legislate common sense." [Try 6 Risk-Free issues of The Week]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?](    [unsubscribe from this list](    [update subscription preferences]( The Week Publications, Inc · 155 E 44th St Fl 22 · New York, NY 10017-4100 · USA