My European pandemic experience has been a tale of two vastly contrasting cities and countries.
In early March, I flew from London to Warsaw, Poland, planning to stay for around ten nights before flying on to Minsk, Belarus. However, on the evening of Friday the 13th (a fitting date), and despite the fact that there were only sixty-eight confirmed cases of the virus in Poland, the Polish government announced a nationwide lockdown. All shops (except supermarkets), cafés, bars, restaurants, universities and schools were to close the following day. All flights and international rail services were suspended. Suddenly, I was stuck in Warsaw. My ten-night stay would turn into seven weeks.
The following week, Poland tightened the rules further. Now, you were now only allowed outside if you were an essential worker, or going to buy food or medicine. A week later, the rules were tightened yet further. Amongst other things, there was now a two-metre distancing restriction in public (even for family members), under-18s were not allowed outside unless accompanied by an adult, strict limits were introduced on the number of people allowed inside a supermarket at any one time and it was mandatory to wear disposable gloves to enter a shop, to be supplied by the supermarkets. (Has single-use plastic ever been so popular?!) The army would now assist the police in patrolling the streets to ensure compliance with the new rules – and gosh, they took that role seriously! Every few hundred yards around the streets in the centre of Warsaw there were police paired up with a member of the armed forces. On more than one occasion, I witnessed a police officer and accompanying soldier approach a couple and instruct them to stop holding hands. One unlucky couple appeared to be issued with a fine for the heinous crime of a public display of affection.
By mid April, it was compulsory to wear a nose and mouth covering if you left your home. The authoritarian Polish Health Minister Łukasz Szumowski announced that face masks would be compulsory until a vaccine were developed! Within the space of a few weeks, the country seemed to have happily embraced a 1984-style totalitarian police state, and the mood in the city had completely changed. The majority now seemed terrified of their fellow humans, going out of their way to walk as far away from others as possible. There was an atmosphere of fear the like of which I have never experienced. It was time to hatch an escape plan.
I took an eventful twelve-hour coach journey from Warsaw to Belarus. Arriving in Minsk was like stepping into a different realm. The mood of the city was not one of fear – things felt pretty normal. Roughly one in ten people chose to wear a mask, and while there were fewer people out and about than usual, by and large they went about their everyday business as if life was normal. Had nobody told them to be terrified of one another? That by simply stepping outside they are risking not just their own life, but the lives of everyone around them? What on earth would Neil Ferguson and his infamous Imperial College model say?
Belarus decided against the nuclear option: they have not pressed the panic button and destroyed the country’s economy, like most of the world. That’s not to say they haven’t introduced some measures. In Minsk, universities have switched to remote lectures; museums and theatres are closed; business trips have been cancelled, with meetings moved to video conferencing; care homes are closed to visitors, and arrivals into the country must self-isolate for fourteen days. But schools remain open, as do cafés, restaurants, bars, shopping malls and most outdoor events. Indeed, many thousands of people lined the streets for the annual Victory Day parade on May 9th. Belarus has struck a refreshing balance: one which has not led to a population in fear of one another.
The country often referred to as the last dictatorship in Europe suddenly has more individual freedoms than virtually anywhere left on earth – freedoms their neighbours the Poles could only dream of, such as the right to be able to get a haircut, or to hold hands with a loved one in public without fear of persecution by the police and armed forces stepping in to enforce the totalitarian rules. The world has turned on its head.
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An excellant article – I particulary like your point about saving face. The government made this political stand of lockdown, with the associated dire effect on the economy. They must now realise the we are not dealing with the Black Death, but they have to ease the lockdown slowly so that it looks like they know what they are doing! It’s not their money, after all.
I agree, an excellent article – even better after seeing the UK Governments response to the ‘second wave’. It seems many of the new restrictions are made to counter (future) criticism that it was slow to lockdown at the beginning. Alexander Hamilton is right, ‘political’ fortune is inflaming the minds of men.
I wonder if the shortage of tests has been engineered to get the government out of their own hole? By limiting tests to Joe Public, the number of positives ought to decrease because as we suspect the positives increase when the number of tests increase. This shortage should at the very least prevent the daily positives from rising.
I agree entirely. I have only just come across this website and wish I knew about it earlier, as at the time of your article I thought I was the only person to see the madness.
To sum up how people thought/think we saw a cyclist riding on a dangerous dual carriageway, with black clothes on, no high-vis or lights on – but he did have a face mask on!
Yep. Because the media hadn’t told him he could get hit by a car at night earlier in the day. Troubling how gullible and devoid of original thought so many are.
We need to fire the media. People are getting sick, but we don’t need to be told about Covid every time we turn on TV. We know if we or our loved ones get sick because it actually happens.
I wonder if they’re trying to cause mass hysteria.
But fear produces an emotional response. Terrifying headlines make good clickbait.
“The New Normal” and similar propaganda soundbites scared me more than any disease. It sounds like some want this current state of affairs to be permanent. But not where I live. We’re sick of it. We enjoy socializing and acting like human beings here.
I masked out of fear of infecting others. Doesn’t seem to help much but it is flu season. I quarantined twice when I suspected I had it and feared I might infect the elderly in my neighborhood.
If it were just my own life at risk and the chances were 50% death instead of 0.4% (according to CDC) I’d say “Hang the risk” and go out and LIVE. We’re all going to die anyhow.
I hate this nightmare. But many seem happy with it being permanent. Hermit misanthropes I guess. If they remained quarantined permanently and let the rest of us live like people should, would anyone miss these antisocial, misanthropic cranks?
BTW, the New Normal can’t last forever. When the economy gets worse food shortages and rolling blackouts will further inconvenience us. Wonder how the lockdown zealots will handle those? And how will they cope with no TV or “social” media to tell them their daily thoughts during blackouts?