Today our prime minister announced we might do a partial reopening of the country after Easter, if (and that’s a pretty big if), we could uphold the current regimen of keeping our distances and not gathering in large crowds. The numbers have been developed positively and the current graphs are showing we’re on track. We’re not being overwhelmed as is seen in Italy and Spain.
To me, that’s some pretty good news. However, I also fear it is too early to open up the country, even if just partially. We won’t be seeing schools and work places returning to full strength immediately. That’s just too risky.
Hong Kong tried that and is now standing as the perfect example of what happens if you let your guard down too soon. They had everything under control (or so they though), but as they reopened the city, it exploded with new cases and they had to shut down everything again. It’s paramount we don’t do the same mistakes as them, but as this is a totally new situation nobody have been in before, it’s hard to know what’s right and wrong until afterwards. At best, we have to make a qualified guess and hope we made the right choice.
We might see some things opening up after Easter, but it won’t be much and not nearly in the degree we’re used to. I’m guessing we will only return to normalization sometime in the summer. That’s a couple of months away at least. And to make matters worse, it might take even longer, depending on how the number of new cases develop as the society returns to normal. Let’s just hope it will be sooner rather than later. Otherwise this is going to be a pretty fucking long summer.
This is part of a series of posts I’ve written about the Corona virus and how it have impacted our society. Equal parts news, observations and thoughts. See the rest of the posts here.