Via The New York Times: Europe’s Deadly Second Wave: How Did It Happen Again? Excerpt:
By early June, scarred and battered, Europe was emerging from the depths of its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Strict lockdowns in most countries had lifted health care systems off their knees, just as the United States and others were fighting record caseloads. The weather was warming up, the European Union was encouraging borders to reopen and Europeans were desperate for a break.
They paid dearly for it.
A devastating second wave has forced reluctant governments back into lockdowns or restrictions and inflicted new scars on European economies. The optimism of the summer is gone, replaced with the realization that loosening precautions led to thousands of deaths just months before vaccines may arrive.
We now know that the second wave in Europe has become deadlier than the first. Nearly 105,000 people died of Covid-19 in November in 31 countries monitored closely by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, surpassing April’s total, official data shows. About as many people are dying in Italy each day as when Bergamo was the center of the world’s attention.
And in most countries, daily deaths are jumping higher this fall than ever before.
Western European countries such as Italy and Belgium, which were hit hard the first time, are suffering nearly as badly now. Portugal is doing even worse. Some countries, including Germany, have done roughly the same, while others have done somewhat better, including Britain. Norway, Ireland and Finland have done best of all.
But most notably, nearly every country in Central and Eastern Europe — which as a region largely skirted the first outbreak — is now seeing alarming spikes in cases and deaths. Dramatic springtime scenes of sick western Europeans stranded on stretchers outside packed hospitals are now playing out in Bulgaria and elsewhere in eastern Europe.
