The NY Times has a piece that presents a Europe that is experiencing some virus spikes but little fatalities from it….
The countries are now moving to go back some sort of ‘normal’ with masks and social distancing while waiting for a vaccine ….
This is mostly possible because the infections have been mostly confined to the younger people….
‘Tolerance’ seems to be key for Europe….
They aren’t losing more than 400 people a day….
In the early days of the pandemic, President Emmanuel Macron exhorted the French to wage “war” against an invisible enemy. Today, his message is to “learn how to live with the virus.’’
Much of Europe has opted for a similar strategy as infections keep rising, summer recedes into a risk-filled autumn and the possibility of a second wave looms over the continent. Having abandoned hopes of eradicating the virus or developing a vaccine quickly, people have largely gone back to work and school, leading lives as normally as possible amid a pandemic that has already killed nearly 215,000 in Europe.
The approach contrasts sharply to the United States, where restrictions to protect against the virus have been politically divisive and where many regions have pushed ahead with reopening schools, shops and restaurants without having baseline protocols in place. The result has been nearly as many deaths as in Europe, though among a far smaller population.
Europeans, for the most part, are putting to use the hard-won lessons from the pandemic’s initial phase: the need to wear masks and practice social distancing, the importance of testing and tracing, the critical advantages of reacting nimbly and locally. All of those measures are intended to prevent the kind of national lockdowns that paralyzed the continent and crippled economies early this year.
“It’s not possible to stop the virus,” said Emmanuel André, a leading virologist in Belgium. “It’s about maintaining equilibrium.”
New infections have soared in recent weeks, especially in France, but the country’s death rate is a small fraction of what it was at its peak. That is because those infected now tend to be younger and health officials have learned how to treat Covid-19 better, said Dr. William Dab, an epidemiologist and a French former national health director….
American “exceptionalism” now seems to mean that in dealing with this virus?
We are “exceptionally “ worse than most countries.