Europe: Another huge Covid wave is building right across the continent

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Almost every country in Europe is now seeing a big increase in Covid cases. In many instances, the waves are already higher than the December 2021 wave.

The chart above shows the situation in Europe at the moment. The pandemic seems to have shifted into an entirely different gear. 

The chart below shows a comparison with previous Covid waves:

 

The current wave in Europe is not entirely made up of Omicron cases either. In some countries, more than 50% of cases are still Delta variant.

 

Last year’s winter wave of 2020/2021 showed signs of having had a double peak, one in November/December 2020, the other in January 2021, with a further lift in cases in March 2021, but all of them were on a much smaller scale than this new winter wave:

 

Under the circumstances, removing all Covid mitigations now, as the UK is proposing to do, would be completely insane.

 

So what can we do? Well, we can do what we should have been doing since February 2020!
  • FREE masks – FFP2 minimum
  • FREE testing
  • FREE ventilation installations, particularly schools and shops
  • Full sick pay for self-isolation of up to 14 days
  • Smaller classrooms located across communities to protect our kids
  • Working from home wherever possible
  • Less contact, reducing unnecessary interactions
  • Less meetings, less flights, less travel, less cruises, less holidays
  • Less festivals, less concerts, less sports events, less garden parties
  • Eat a better diet
  • Support each other
  • Stop hoping big pharma will bail us out – they won’t, they can’t

The virus has outsmarted us, it has outwitted us, and it’s winning hands down. It’s hardly surprising given how dimwitted and clumsy our response has been so far.

It’s a pandemic. Do we really have to wait for our fourth or fifth infection to work this simple shit out?
** This post was originally published on January 23, 2022 **