EU -The Netherlands: Dutch Exceptionalism: Will Holland's Looser Corona Policies Pay Off?

Off?

One EU country after the other is moving to restrict public life. The Dutch government has opted for less drastic measures, hoping for herd immunity and relying on the common sense of its people. But the country has still had to make adjustments to its policies.

The Big Bazar in Winterswijk is, as usual, full of "Big Deals!" despite the coronavirus. Plastic footballs, clothespins for hanging laundry, flower pots and various other things are for sale at the store in the Dutch border town. There’s a stand with jackets in front of the clothing shop next door and the drug store Kruidvat across the street has a special offer on creme. People seem relaxed as they stroll through the pedestrian zone and there's not a face mask to be seen. If you visited Winterswijk last Saturday, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the pandemic doesn’t even exist here. But just 10 kilometers away, in the town of Vreden on the German side of the border, almost all the stores have been closed for several days.

Opposition politicians in the Netherlands have been highly critical of the strategy. "Many Dutch people feel like they are being made part of a big experiment,” Lodwijk Asscher, the head of the country’s center-left Social Democratic Party has said. Right-wing radical politician Geert Wilders has said: "Rutte is playing Russian roulette with our people. Many people will get sick as a result. People will die.” Scientists believe that 60 to 70 percent of the population would have to come into contact with the virus to achieve herd immunity, the equivalent of more than 10 million Dutch people. Even with a low mortality among the young and the fittest, this would mean thousands of deaths. And the health system would soon be at its limits.

Read more: Dutch Exceptionalism: Will Holland's Looser Corona Policies Pay Off? - DER SPIEGEL

Food Shortages - Coronavirus measures could cause global food shortage, UN warns

Protectionist measures by national governments during the coronavirus crisis could provoke food shortages around the world, the UN’s food body has warned.

Harvests have been good and the outlook for staple crops is promising, but a shortage of field workers brought on by the virus crisis and a move towards protectionism – tariffs and export bans – mean problems could quickly appear in the coming weeks, Maximo Torero, chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, told the Guardian.

“The worst that can happen is that governments restrict the flow of food,” he said. “All measures against free trade will be counterproductive. Now is not the time for restrictions or putting in place trade barriers. Now is the time to protect the flow of food around the world.”

Read more at: Coronavirus measures could cause global food shortage, UN warns | Global development | The Guardian

Germany and the Netherlands: Corona Virus: Germany and the Netherlands seem to fight off the virus better than most. Here’s why - by Rupert Steiner

The Netherlands and Germany both showed glimmers of hope in the battle to combat coronavirus on Wednesday, as the numbers of cases in New York rose rapidly.

Data from Germany shows just 0.4% of people who tested positive for the virus have passed away, much less than the 9.5% in Italy and 4.3% in France. In the Netherlands growth in transmissions of the virus have slowed significantly.

Giving evidence in front of the Dutch Parliament Jaap van Dissel, boss of the Netherlands National Institute of Health, said: “The exponential growth of the outbreak has in all probability been brought to a halt,” with the infection only being passed on at a rate of one infected person to another.

If proven, this would be a significant achievement. In some countries, the spread from one infected person has been to as many as five or more. In the U.S., the state of New York had 5,146 new cases
confirmed on Wednesday, and more than 30,000 have tested positive.

The low death rate in Germany has confounded experts, and it could be due to different causes. The possible explanation is that doctors aggressively screened citizens who were either fit or sick early on at the time they took the test, at a rate not seen in other countries, who only had the resources to test the very sick. This have skewed the compaarison with other countries, because those who were fit when tested and had caught the virus were more likely to suffer from a mild case and survive.

Germany also was more effective than most countries at tracking and tracing contacts of infected patients before the spread took hold, effectively containing it better than other countries.

Another more random theory is that the first Germans to contract the virus caught it mixing with other nationalities while skiing, which suggested that they were fit and active, and less likely to succumb to the disease.

Read more at: Germany and the Netherlands seem to fight off the virus better than most. Here’s why - MarketWatch

EU - Corona Virus:: 200,000+ coronavirus cases in Europe

The number of coronavirus cases in Europe has surpassed 200,000, AFP reports citing its own tally. Italy and Spain have been hit worst by the pandemic on the continent.

Earlier the World Health Organization warned that the pace of the disease spread was increasing worldwide. It took just four days for the number of global cases to grow from 200,000 to over 300,000.

Read more at: 200,000+ coronavirus cases in Europe - AFP tally — RT World News

The Netherlands: Coranavirus Repatriation €10 million fund launched to bring Dutch Citizens back to the Netherlands

Travelers stuck outside of the Netherlands due to flights being halted or severely limited in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic have a new option to get help to return home. A ten-million euro fund was launched on Monday to provide assistance to stranded fliers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Monday.

Essentially, passengers will contribute 300 euros for their own repatriation if returning back from the European Union or 20 countries near the EU. The personal contribution rises to 900 euros for countries further away from the list of EU-adjacent countries.

"We need to do our utmost to get these people home safely," said Stef Blok, the Dutch foreign minister, of the complicated situation. "Because of the huge impact of the coronavirus, this group in particular really has nowhere else to turn."

Read more at: €10 million fund launched to bring people back to Netherlands | NL Times

The Netherlands: Total coronavirus cases quadruple in a week to 4,204; Death toll reaches 179

 Some 43 coronavirus patients died in the Netherlands since Saturday, with the nation now mourning the loss of 179 people, public health agency RIVM said on Sunday. The agency also announced that another 573 tested positive for the virus, pushing the total number of diagnosed patients to 4,204, nearly four-times the number of patients recorded on March 15.

Just one week ago, the total number of patients in the Netherlands was 1,077. By that date, a total of 20 people who tested positive for the virus had died, a figure which has increased by 800 percent in the past seven days.

The dead ranged in age from 57 to 97, a change from the range of 63 to 95 years of age reported by the agency on Friday.

Another 152 were identified as being treated in hospital since Saturday. The number of people that have required hospitalization since the first patient in the Netherlands was diagnosed in February equaled 988.

On Saturday, there were 354 people being treated in intensive care units across the Netherlands, which has 1,150 ICU beds in total. The government said the total number of ICU beds could be quickly scaled up to 1,500, and another 500 could be created by reallocating resources like ventilators present at various clinics.

Noord-Brabant again saw the biggest increase in people testing positive, with 224 new patients raising its total to 1,404. Zuid-Holland demonstrated an increase of 99 people testing positive there, bringing that province's total to 585, while Noord-Holland (535) showed an increase of 71 patients. Overall, the percentage of the country's total patients resident in Noord-Brabant sat at about 33 percent, a slight increase from Saturday's figures. Ten days ago, Noord-Brabant was home to about 45 percent of coronavirus patients.

The Netherlands: Total coronavirus cases quadruple in a week to 4,204; Death toll reaches 179 | NL Times

EU Unity Needed More than Ever: EU leaders need to be communicating a shared vision to get us through the coronavirus crisis

The role of the European institutions has been seriously questioned during the past two weeks. As a passionate European, this hurts to see. Despite the efforts of the European Commission to help and to intervene in the crisis, member states have decided rather to take a national approach and to focus less on coordination and solidarity. The fact that the European institutions are not being seen as problem solvers tells a relevant and consequential story. Moreover, recent developments speak volumes about how much trust national leaders actually place - undeservingly - in the President of the European Commission, the commissioners and their teams.

The Commision has the opportunity to step up its communications game, since nobody else is really standing up for Europe (locally as well as globally) in these critical times. Before we achieve “Global Europe,” let us secure “Community Europe.” The Commission should act without expecting any further mandate since Europe is, as Emmanuel Macron put it on Monday in regard to France, "at war." The continent is now, after all, the new global "epicentre" of COVID-19, so communication will be paramount and the way the EU does so on key issues will matter.

First, they should concentrate on EU values and delivery amid health concerns. More important than the political relations between member states and the European institutions is the sentiment that European solidarity is as scarce as medical masks and scrubs. The initial response to the Italian call for help is not something Europe should be proud of. The option overwhelmingly embraced by national governments to close borders also highlights the difficulty of coordination at the EU level: when panic comes, we go national. Maybe expectations are too high and the crisis too deep, but, at the end of the day, what remains is the perception that every country is on its own. Perhaps this impression is wrong or will be changed as events unfold. But this should be part of a serious conversation about what European solidarity means in good and, more importantly, bad times. Here again, the European Commission - and empathically, its leader - should lead in the months to come. In times of crisis, people follow examples: think Churchill (alas, Brexit!) not chilling out.

Second, the economy. More broadly, the entire debacle over medical products and equipment brings a key question about economic globalisation and global value chains. The COVID-19 pandemic brings to the fore the idea that Europe cannot externalise everything - a reframing of strategic autonomy to include this is in order. Maintaining production capacity and facilities for essential products is fundamental, and here the strategic interest is more important than the generous principles of open trade and free markets. It is hard to say what will be the dominant view at the end of the crisis, but, at this moment, everyone is asking for expansion of the State and for more state interventions, putting the EU and more widely, the liberal democratic economic model, under stress.

Read more at: EU leaders need to be communicating a shared vision to get us through the coronavirus crisis ǀ View | Euronews