downinit

Yes, we all know what it happening today in the EU. But anyone who has been paying attention over the last year also knows how the mention of the word 'variant' causes half of the continent to shut down at the blink of an eye. Another variant is inevitable, and there are certainly no guarantees that the "circuit breaker" will not go haywire again when it does emerge. If it happens to show signs of vaccine resistance and increased hospitalization rates, we will be back at square one in a very short order. At least an EU-approved QR code provided some level of protection in terms of being allowed access.

Sjoerd

Wow. The pessimism and negativity is palpable.

GUWonder

Realism is neither pessimistic nor negativity -- it's just a recognition of the world as it is rather than as the world some may like it to be.

Even the "cautious" Danes and Norwegians have thrown caution to the wind. It would take a much more massive surge in hospitalizations and deaths to get even them "back on track" with a rush to caution again.

downinit

In California and the rest of the USA, we have been partying continuously since last summer, with practically zero restrictions and only a 3G check in some locations. I am not worried about what will happen over here. Remind me again how things were going in the NL over the winter? You seem to be confusing pessimism and pragmatism. When the EU countries can get through a single surge or variant without bringing back lockdowns and curfews, I will be able to let down my guard. That day has not yet come.

As it is, I am holding onto passes for three music festivals in Europe, delayed from 2020. I have been to about a dozen festivals in the USA since August. Just about every event in Europe is still being cancelled or postponed indefinitely, including events scheduled for this month.

Sjoerd

I am going to a musical in about an hour, and have been to cinemas and theatres a lot recently. I now have fixed dates in Spring/Summer 2022 for all my concerts that were scheduled for 2020.
So it’s not true that “just about every event is still being cancelled or indefinitely postponed in Europe”.

stimpy

I guy I know calls it "crate training". Like you would train a puppy to stay in his crate. It seems that a lot of people have been crate trained and are really resisting a return to normal. Thankfully there are others who ignore them and are going towards the direction of normalcy. Maybe many of these people, including government bureaucrats, realize that they have an urgent fiscal reason to get back to normalcy. Maybe others get the overly negative societal impact, especially against people of lower income and children. But whatever the reason, it is going to happen.

downinit

All of my events had "fixed dates" scheduled for summer 2021, as well.

GUWonder

In 2021, I saw events cancelled in various parts of Europe in a way that just isn't happening as much anymore in these places in 2022. There's been an attitude shift and a sort of arrogance/confidence that has risen across parts of "reopened" Europe in the wake of high-levels of vaccination/vaccine availability in these places.

Visconti

Have you seen the crowd at the Super Bowl or the sports books in Vegas? While I'm not sure if it's over but for all intents and purposes, I suspect, for the first time, it's really over after this go. Of course, I had thought this countless time the last 2+ years only to see a variant trigger a sudden 180 reaction. I mean, come on guys, anyone surprised that this Omi turned out to be virtually nothing? Didn't some medical professionals in SA try to warn us?

Good. Let's try this because the arrogance that had permeated from "crate dweller" (as stumpy so aptly coined) proponents hasn't worked. It's about time we try something else.

Howmuch

I’ve got tickets for music festivals in the US later this year, postponed twice since autumn 2020.

I’m becoming more confident by the day that this year I’ll actually make it despite the fact I've remained unvaccinated.

It’s definitely time to move on.

DYKWIA

Well done on your 1 million deaths. Must be so proud!

wooootles

surprising since NL has been one of the more finnicky ones throughout these whole ordeal.

Howmuch

Even Austria have announced they’ll be removing most restrictions from the 5th of March, pretty much 2 years to the week that things started.

https://www.thelocal.com/20220216/co...rom-march-5th/

looks like this could be over as fast as it started 🤞🏻

the810

I'm afraid that concerns Swiss citizens and residents. The ability to convert foreign certificate into a Swiss certificate has been intended for visitors in Switzerland (which is why they required a proof of travel to Switzerland) and since certificate won't be needed in Switzerland anymore, I don't see this system remaining in operation. It doesn't make sense.

There is one major difference - until now, having a lot of spread was considered bad, thus any more infectious variant (which means any variant that can possibly become widespread) was considered bad. This is not the case anymore, countries are reopening while they have all time high number of cases. So I think the chance of knee-jerk reactions is much lower. As far as vaccine resistance is concerned, it won't get much worse than it already is with omicron + entire population will have some kind of natural immunity from omicron, which will be more effective than one from vaccine, especially for possible omicron spin-offs. We will only have a problem is less mild variant arises and becomes widespread but that's unlikely from evolutionary perspective (which of course doesn't mean it's impossible).

​​​​​​But there is another level to this. I believe omicron is only partially responsible for these reopenings. Governments must have realised by now that the strategy they went for causes a lot of damage and is not unsustainable in the long run. Omicron is a good excuse to change the strategy without having to admit that unprecedented restrictions on freedom that we've seen in recent years were a terrible decision.

In any case, I expect summer to be 100% normal in 90% of Europe. Autumn may be a different story.

It will be very regional. I'm in Denmark and it's 100% normal, pretty much everyone adapted to normality immediately. But it will be tougher in some other countries.

I always said there are two types of countries when it comes to how COVID was approached in public communications. The first group is "we're all going to die", where governments tried to claim that everyone is at a high risk of having severe covid, in an attempt to make society compliant. These countries will have hard time reopening as they have high ratio of people scared of catching it. The second group is mostly represented by Nordics where the reasoning behind restrictions was primarily that we need to protect health care from being overburden, while admitting that risk level is fairly low for most people. These countries will reopen easily, because once that societal risk is claimed to not exist anymore, people won't see a reason to stick to the panic mode.

the810

But still, masks in some cases remain for the time being. I find it quite absurd that events with 50 000 people are ok, but God forbid someone wouldn't wear a mask on a train.