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JTA’s chief European correspondent looks at life in the Netherlands, where the government has decided to impose social distancing on a large scale.
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Our Sunday in the park with the kids is so widespread it’s worrying.
My wife, children and I were among hundreds of people enjoying the first sunny day of spring at the Amsterdam Woods, a large patch of man-made forest in the Dutch capital’s south. There were new daffodils, the forest’s cherished picnic clearings and even a queue of visitors waiting to see its famous cherry orchard, which last week burst into spectacular blossom.
After a few hours, we almost forgot that most of our friends and family across Europe, in Israel and beyond are under space arrest to varying degrees due to government emergency measures against the coronavirus.
This is because Holland took a different approach.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte necessarily argued that social distancing would only prolong the disastrous effects of the virus. He believes, based on the wisdom of medical professionals, that the Dutch population deserves some exposure to the virus so that immunity can take shape and society can return to a sense of normality as temporarily as possible.
The Dutch government has closed schools, cafes, cinemas, places of worship and many offices, but here we are still free to move around, shop, pick up takeaways and receive parcels by post. Our vast public transportation network has lost its rhythm.
Sweden has a lax policy. The United Kingdom, whose Prime Minister Boris Johnson had followed the same policy of “herd immunity” as Rutte, adopted stricter measures on Monday, asking citizens to stay at home and ordering the closure of department stores promoting non-essential products. Johnson finally ordered a total lockdown on Monday.
That makes Sweden and Holland the exceptions in Western Europe. Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland have all gone into total lockdown, along with parts of Germany.
Our relative freedom is, of course, an immense privilege and a reassuring comfort. But as dead bodies pile up across the continent (the Netherlands has recorded more than 200 deaths), our truth is also a growing source of concern that not enough is being done to save the widespread epidemic plaguing Europe and the rest of the world.
I have lived through four or five primary missile attacks, two intifadas, and military combat service in my local Israel, as well as reporting in several war zones. But the images filmed in Italian hospitals make me worry about my life for the first time. .
I can see the logic in the Dutch approach, although I’m not entirely convinced by the immunity plan and the murky science of it. After all, there is a limit to how long a block lasts. The virus will still exist when it is lifted, and an epidemic will follow, after several weeks of lockdown have devastated our national resources.
But pandemics are very unpredictable and letting them spread based on a bunch of assumptions is like playing Russian roulette because the odds are in our favor.
I don’t question whether it is wise to allow other people to spread the virus. On Sunday, Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block blatantly criticized Dutch policy for the first time.
“They are letting the virus get out of control,” he told De Morgen of the Netherlands, with which Belgium has a porous border.
Marino Keulen, mayor of the Belgian border town of Lanaken, called the Netherlands “the weakest link in the European chain.”
I can already see the effects of the virus all around me. My rabbi from the time I lived in The Hague until 2015 is under intensive care. On Thursday, I learned that two of my friends, one in The Hague and the other in Antwerp, had contracted COVID-19.
Over the weekend, an acquaintance of mine, Rabbi André Touboul, founder of the important Beth Hanna Jewish school in Paris, died suddenly at the age of 64. A short man, full of life, with an informal and friendly demeanor, who he brought to Paris. coming from his local Marseille, Touboul, in good shape and with no underlying medical problems.
In London, the disease claimed the lives of at least six Jews, Ze’ev Stern, an 86-year-old rabbi and philanthropist who survived the Holocaust, and a 97-year-old woman, Frieda Feldman. Italy has some 5,500 dead, former leader of Milan’s Jewish community, Michele Sciama.
And as most of us know, the situation will get worse, it will get better. German Chancellor Angela Merkel shocked the continent when she said on March 13 that around 70% of her country’s population would contract the disease.
Some Jewish communities here are bracing for a much higher infection rate because of what is often their greatest strength: a sense of cohesion. This will now be their greatest weakness, and policies like the Dutch reaction do not protect them.
“The local Belgian has a circle of about fifteen friends and family. In the Jewish network in Antwerp, the figure is 150,” Michael Freilich, a Jewish member of the Belgian parliament, told me. “The Jews of Antwerp all know each other, the synagogue is a prolonged family. »
Citing this reality, leaders of the Antwerp ultra-Orthodox Jewish network expect an infection rate of 85%, well above projections for the general population, which range between 50 and 70%. Under this model, about 17,000 more people in the network would contract the virus, resulting in more than 550 deaths.
We said goodbye without hugging or kissing. My children, absorbed in their own little world, waved nonchalantly goodbye as they were loaded into the car. We walked away and I watched in the mirror how her slender figure had become a blue spot on the beautiful spring flower.
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