COVID Rules Ebb and Flow in Europe

The COVID regime ebbs and flows throughout Europe. The zig zags reflect health requirements, national politics, and other factors, including the level of civil disobedience.

Despite weekly anti-COVID mass demonstrations, France refuses to budge from its strict pandemic apartheid policies, treating the unvaccinated as second-class citizens. Or as President Emmanuel Macron put it so ever elegantly, he is going to “p*** off” the non-jabbed French.

Street unrest makes no difference in Germany and Poland. Berlin stays the course maintaining its strict COVID regime. Warsaw follows a similar path to an extent, currently mulling the introduction of total lockdown and COVID apartheid.

Austria boasts Europe’s harshest COVID regime at the moment. As far as the “Made in China” pandemic, it is currently the least free country on the Continent. We shall expand on that below in a moment.

But let’s hear the good news first.

Despite of what the government calls “the sixth wave” of infection, Spain has bowed to the needs of its crippled tourist industry and allows most foreigners in without tests, provided they attest to being fully vaccinated.

Holland’s total lockdown is no more. The nation saw some of the most violent protests in Europe; the world was shocked by the spectacle of cops not just beating and gassing the anti-COVID regime demonstrators, but by unleashing dogs on them.

Brothels, shops, and hair salons can now operate freely. However, Dutch restaurants still remain closed. Some resourceful entrepreneurs therefore have turned their establishments into grocery stores or barber shops, which offer food and live music inside.

Since it is almost fully vaccinated at least a couple times over, Norway has decided to relax its stringent pandemic standards. If you travel to Norway, you no longer need to quarantine for 10 days; you will be simply required to get tested several times to ascertain that you are virus-free.

It appears that this concerns even unvaccinated citizens and visitors. To boot, Oslo has also lifted some restrictions on alcohol. No more prohibition: we can drink to that.

Denmark positively outdid nearly everyone. As of February 1, Copenhagen removed virtually all COVID restrictions, including the mask mandate. A similar decision by Britain reflects political opportunism rather than common sense.

Premier Boris Johnson and his cabinet members were busted partying maskless, thus flaunting its own impunity to the official pandemic regime.

To thwart the imminent ouster, Johnson freed the Brits. He’s still not off the hook as the police has opened up an investigation into the maskless romp.

The same mechanism worked the other way in Austria. A political scandal resulted in a brutal tightening of Vienna’s COVID regime.

Late last year, the Austrian leadership of the populist-libertarian-nationalist-conservative part of the governing coalition was caught red-handed in bribery and influence peddling schemes. The two most important top fliers felt compelled to resign. The nation’s discredited ex-chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, actually left politics altogether for a cushy job in the United States.

To maintain themselves in power, the governing coalition — including center right Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People’s Party) and the leftist Greens — not only legalized euthanasia, but also introduced the most repressive anti-COVID measures ever in Europe. We can surmise that OVP sold out to the Greens to keep the coalition government at the helm.

The leadership not only ordered a total lockdown and COVID apartheid, but it also mandated vaccinations all adults. Children came next.

To compel the citizens to obey, the government went to extreme lengths. These refusing vaccination can be imprisoned. The harshness of the measures prompted the police to remark publicly that they were virtually unenforceable.

The government has obviously violated the constitution. It infringed upon human rights, including by fines, police repressions, and firings of civil servants for objecting to the official policy (including for participating in demonstrations on their own time.

Vienna also undertook an array of positive measures to encourage the citizens to obey. For example, the authorities set up a vaccination post in a brothel, promising a free service for those who take the jab.

An explosion of popular resistance engulfed the nation. Austria’s mass demonstrations against the COVID regime measures soon turned violent. The government responded with ruthlessness.

It swore it would not relent. But it soon did.

Vienna promised to lift some of the most stringent restrictions on January 31. Such is the ebb and flow of COVID politics: except in Florida.