OPINION
We’re Locked Down Again in the Netherlands.
Here’s a Warning.
Dec. 24,
2021
By Senay
Boztas
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/opinion/omicron-lockdown.html
Ms. Boztas
is a British journalist who has lived in the Netherlands for more than a decade
and has written and worked for media including The Guardian, The Sunday Times
of London and the BBC.
AMSTERDAM —
Since 5 a.m. on Sunday, bars, restaurants, museums, schools, clothing stores,
gift shops and anything resembling fun have been closed across the Netherlands.
We’ve become the first European country to go back to lockdown life amid
Omicron (until at least early January): It was “unavoidable,” said Prime Minister
Mark Rutte. So here we are, looking over the borders enviously at holiday sales
and seasonal celebrations in Belgian Antwerp. Once more, it doesn’t look a lot
like Christmas.
The
Netherlands’ lockdown stands as a warning to the United States, other European
countries and Covid hot spots across the globe. The warning, though, isn’t just
about Omicron — other countries have more coronavirus cases and worse
vaccination rates than the Netherlands does, and they are not locking down (at
least yet).
The warning
is about policy failures — the failure to start a booster campaign sooner, to
spin up free testing capacity quickly when needed, to persuade more groups of
the benefits of vaccines and to ensure there are enough beds in intensive care.
Now our hospitals are already full of patients who are infected with the Delta
variant, and we probably won’t have enough beds for all of the people who need
care if the Omicron wave hits vaccinated people hard too.
Think of
the Dutch lockdown as a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a Dickensian warning —
in a country where the annual Dickens festival has been canceled — about the
need for every country to be on its toes in the pandemic era.
So far this
holiday season, Europe is trying to allow at least some festive cheer. While
Austria enforced a sharp three-week lockdown and severe limits on the
unvaccinated, many countries are still trying to avoid shutdowns. In Germany,
the vaccinated will be able to have up to 10 guests at New Year’s parties;
Boris Johnson is determined not to have new British restrictions yet; Belgium
is closing certain indoor venues; and France has largely closed restaurants to
the unvaccinated — but these countries are not at crisis point.
In the Netherlands,
we are, because of the lack of strong and consistent crisis management. Part of
the reason is that the government resigned in January and the country took 271
days to form a new one after the March elections. But our troubles also stem
from ever-more-unhelpful ideas about freedom — a word with great resonance and
many meanings here as well as in the United States and across the West.
The current
Dutch lockdown was triggered foremost by a record-breaking average of 22,000
new infections a day at the end of November (in a country of 17.6 million),
with severe cases largely among people who have chosen not to get vaccinated,
and a rapid spread among school-age children.
Hospitals
gave dire warnings of “code black,” meaning they are running out of beds. Some
patients were transferred to Germany. And on top of all this, Omicron —
currently up to 15 percent of infections — is expected to cause another spike.
But haven’t
we learned enough in the last two years to avoid stop-start lockdown as a
gut-reaction pandemic response?
The recent
history in the Netherlands helps show why the answer is frustratingly muddled.
Although the country has seen frequent and sometimes violent protests against
coronavirus prevention measures, vaccination compliance is high and 85.9
percent of people are fully jabbed.
However,
the country has been criticized for going back to “normal” too quickly. In
July, for instance, the government had to backpedal on an overenthusiastic
loosening of restrictions, including on nightclubs, where high attendance led
to “superspreader” events.
Then, in
September, two days before the British National Health Service started its
booster campaign, Dutch leaders canceled the country’s
“one-and-a-half-meter-distanced-society” and told people it was OK to hug
again. At the time, health minister Hugo de Jonge said confidently that
“vaccine effectivity is high” so the country wasn’t starting a booster
campaign.
Entry to
events and spaces was based on a QR code for people who had been vaccinated,
recovered from Covid, or could show a recent negative test. But the “test for
entry” setup has been mired in problems.
The lesson
from the Netherlands is that even an admirable level of vaccination is not
enough: We need to think about long-term strategy, regular boosters and
unlimited, free access to testing if countries want to avoid swinging between
extremes.
Another
trigger for this total lockdown is the Dutch adherence to freedom. Unlike in
Austria, banning the unvaccinated from spaces and places is a hot potato for
all political parties. Dutch personal freedoms are strongly protected in the
constitution — but surely this ban would be better than lockdown, where we all
pay the price?
Prime
Minister Rutte has said repeatedly that he has “no intention” of imposing
vaccination by law, at one point arguing that the Netherlands is a “slightly
anarchistic country that doesn’t need a preachy government.” But some people
have had enough: Just 52 percent of Dutch people support a hard lockdown, while
trust in government coronavirus policy is at record lows.
Meanwhile,
hundreds of thousands of small businesses now risk financial ruin, M.P.s say.
“There’s a silent majority in the Netherlands, that together with business
owners, the Royal Dutch Football Association, music venues, the culture sector
are asking for alternatives,” Jan Paternotte, a center-left member of
parliament, said on Tuesday.
Perhaps, as
Mr. Rutte says, Dutch lockdown is a sign of things to come elsewhere with
Omicron — we just got here first. Or perhaps Omicron will prove less virulent
and burn out the worse strains to save us all.
But here we
are again, with no Christmas spirit in our empty restaurants and a maximum of
four guests a day (if we aren’t already infected or in quarantine).
It being
the Netherlands, though, there’s often a workaround. One in seven people claim
to have had a sneaky manicure, hair trim or massage. And just as Covid crosses
borders, hundreds have gone shopping in Antwerp.
Senay
Boztas is a British journalist who has lived in the Netherlands for more than a
decade and has written and worked for media including The Guardian, The Sunday
Times of London and the BBC.
The Times
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