It’s been about COVID-19 for over a year now. On all media. TV and radio are becoming more and more difficult to tolerate. Today’s main topic in the Netherlands is when we will be free again and how it is possible that the UK, Denmark and Israel will go back to the old normal while India, Brazil and Russia seem to be on their way to hell and we, in the Netherlands, do not hear from our government about clear deadlines. Nowhere is it discussed how we conquered the first wave and whether we might not be able to repeat that trick. I feel transformed into a flying insect among countless peers, but the only one that still thinks and feels like a human being, a thinking insect that finds itself in a room with a closed window that looks out to the sun. My fellow sufferers collectively indulge in joint kamikaze flying against the window pane. I look around and feel alone. And powerless.
Below I give a figure with twelve graphs showing the development of the numbers of registered infections per day (per 100 million inhabitants, red) and the numbers of registered deaths per day (per million inhabitants, black). The first line has the countries with the old normal in sight, the second line has the countries that are not yet ready, the third line the countries that appear to be at risk of COVID meltdown and the fourth line the countries that appear to have Covid under control in a form of a new normal, using a hard and clear testing and enforcement approach.
