It’s like being told just before the finish of the marathon that you have to run an extra ten kilometers.
With the umpteenth visual metaphor of the outgoing Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge (CDA), the cabinet presented new, far-reaching measures to suppress the rapidly growing number of corona infections.
“A very radical package,” admitted Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD). To immediately sketch a beckoning future perspective. After this “hard blow of a few weeks”, Rutte said, the Netherlands is moving towards a situation in which the virus will be “delayed” with new, ‘smarter’ measures: expanding the number of situations in which you need a ‘corona ticket’. (such as at work) and restricting access to hospitality and events from ‘3G’ (vaccinated, cured or tested) to ‘2G’ (vaccinated and cured).
The lockdown light which the cabinet is now pronouncing, has been taking shape for a while. Last Wednesday, a new record was set with 16,364 positive corona tests. Despite the high vaccination rate in the Netherlands of 84.4 percent of the adult inhabitants, the number of infections has risen to such an extent that last Friday 330 people were in ICUs. Eighteen months ago there were four times as many, but then all regular care came to a standstill – resulting in enormous backlogs. Such a situation should not occur again, said De Jonge.
It took the responsible ministers two days to make the decision – there was talk until four o’clock on Friday, a clearly tired De Jonge hinted. The government is therefore taking a step that it thought it no longer needed to take. RIVM director Jaap van Dissel said he no longer expects a new lockdown in mid-October; Minister De Jonge previously said that he expected the Netherlands to be able to keep corona under control this winter with QR checks and vaccinations.
But even before the flu season really started, the cabinet was surprised by the capriciousness and unpredictability of the virus. That’s a constant. The cabinet has already foreseen the end of the crisis several times: in June 2020, for example, when the first lockdown came to an end, and also last autumn, when the cabinet abolished most of the measures and expressed the hope that all measures would be taken once and for all as of November 1. to be able to.
Vulnerable position
As a result, the Netherlands is now in a vulnerable position, in which not only are the infections rising rapidly, but the public discomfort about the measures is also growing. Basic rules, such as the 1.5 meter distance, are being followed less and less, according to behavioral research by the RIVM. Royal Horeca Nederland threatened on Friday that part of the industry will ignore the new closing time.
The government is partly to blame for this. Scientists have regularly warned that the vaccines would bring relief, but would not turn out to be a panacea. Where scientists talked about years of struggle, the cabinet always presented corona as a temporary disruption. Last May, the cabinet presented an ambitious ‘opening plan’ in which the corona measures would be phased out step by step, on the way to the new normal. No attention was paid to an opposite development: scenarios in which the virus would circulate more quickly. In September, the WRR and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) presented an advisory report containing five future scenarios. In only two of these (‘back to normal’ and ‘flu +’) measures can largely be dispensed with.
In view of the great uncertainties, the WRR report argues in favor of a long-term vision, in which uncertainties are planned. When the infections started to rise again a few weeks ago, people around the cabinet were told that this was not a problem: sooner or later people will have to build up immunity to a virus that will no longer disappear. Now the hospitals are filling up again and the cafes have to close at eight o’clock. Minister De Jonge remained stubbornly optimistic: “We are not saying that the virus will be gone after the winter. But I do think we are learning to live with it more and more.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad of 13 November 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 13, 2021
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