Return To Normal Is A Long Ways Off As Some Nations Ease Coronavirus Restrictions

A woman enters a partially open department shop in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Smaller shops allowed to open in the German capital from today on. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
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BERLIN (AP) — One of the grimmest symbols of the coronavirus outbreak — a morgue set up in a Madrid skating rink — closed on Wednesday as stores and other businesses reopened in places across Europe, while the U.S. was beset with increasingly partisan disagreements over how and when to restart its economy.

As some governors in the U.S. — largely Republican ones — moved to reopen an ever-wider variety of businesses, others took a more cautious approach and came under mounting pressure from protesters complaining that their livelihoods are being destroyed and their freedom of movement is being infringed on.

With the crisis easing but far from over in Europe, small shops in Berlin reopened, and restrictions were also relaxed in Denmark and Austria. In France, long lines formed outside the few McDonald’s drive-thrus that started serving customers again.

Still, many employees and customers were uneasy, suggesting that a return to normal is a long way off.

“Of course I’m happy that I can open again and we can keep our heads above water,” said Galina Hooge, who opened her small Berlin toy store for the first time in over a month. But she worried that some Germans still aren’t taking the outbreak seriously.

“Relaxing the rules doesn’t mean that everything is over. It’s not over by a long stretch,” she said.

Across the Atlantic in Savannah, Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp announced that gyms and salons can reopen this week, gym owner Mark Lebos said it would be professional negligence to do so right now.

“We are not going to be a vector of death and suffering,” he said.

The outbreak has infected over 2.5 million people and killed about 180,000 around the world, including more than 45,000 in the U.S., according to a tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University from official government figures, though the true numbers are believed to be far higher.

Although some hot spots like Italy, Spain and New York have seen a drop in daily death tolls and new hospitalizations, other areas are facing a resurgence of the coronavirus.

Singapore, once a model of virus tracking and prevention, saw an explosion of new cases and announced it would extend its lockdown into June.

In California, health officials said two people with coronavirus died in the state weeks before the first reported U.S. death from the disease on Feb. 29 in Washington state. The finding shows that COVID-19 had been circulating in the U.S. earlier than was previously thought.

The economic fallout from the crisis mounted as oil prices suffered an epic collapse and U.S. stocks registered their worst loss in weeks Tuesday on Wall Street. The U.S. Senate approved nearly $500 billion in coronavirus aid for businesses, hospitals and testing. The bill goes next to the House.

In North Carolina, where Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is keeping in place his stay-home order for at least another week, hundreds marched around the executive mansion on Tuesday. At the Missouri Capitol, several hundred with the same demands waved the American flag and chanted “USA! USA!”

And in Wisconsin, GOP legislative leaders asked the state Supreme Court to block an extension of the Democratic governor’s stay-home order.

Spain, one of the world’s worst-hit countries, planned to allow children out of their homes next week for the first time in nearly six weeks.

“I am aware of the tremendous effort that the confinement has demanded of our smallest ones and their families,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.

The country’s death toll reached nearly 22,000, behind only the United States and Italy, after 435 more deaths were reported Wednesday. But the numbers reflected a plateauing of the outbreak.

In another hopeful sign, a large makeshift morgue at an ice rink closed.

India partially eased one of the world’s strictest lockdowns this week, but health officials fear a surge in cases. Starting in May, the country is planning to use wristbands fitted with an app to track people’s movements and body temperature.

The technology is aimed at easing the vast manpower needed to track the virus among the country’s 1.3 billion people.

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Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece. AP journalists worldwide contributed to this report.

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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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Notable Replies

  1. This here illustrates everything that is wrong with the AP. Report the bare “facts” without any neccessary contextual information like the evidence these protests are being astroturfed. So once again a hearty “fuck you, AP.”

  2. “Reporting of bare facts” is being generous I’d say. There’s no meaningful pressure being created by these small groups of astroturfed whackadoos.

    There’s also a lack of context in a lot of these stories about restrictions being eased in Europe because their restrictions are often so much more severe than ours to begin with. I heard a story on NPR about Spain relaxing some restrictions and was surprised given how hard they had been hit. But the details of the story were that they were now going to allow children under the age of 12 or so to go outside and play. And in the story here they mention that McDonald’s drive thrus have reopened - something that never closed anywhere in US to my knowledge.

  3. There are by some estimates 300-ish million people in the nation that haven’t been exposed to the disease. Herd immunity is many, many months in the future. If it is achieved in any appreciable degree it will be at the cost of hundreds of thousands dead getting there.

    Someone needs to explain why it’s any more safe to venture into public venues with other people today than it was 4 weeks ago. And why will it be safer still to do so 4 weeks from now. Won’t there be as many or more asymptomatic people among us in the future as there are today? Won’t the transmissibility of the infection be the same as always?

    “Normal” will not return until there is a vaccine, or at minimum a very effective therapeutic treatment for those fallen sick.

    There is a helluva lot of denial of the reality of this situation we’re in. All we’re doing now, gradually, is inching toward measures that will see everyone get the disease, get (allegedly) immunity, and a large number of people being sacrificed while we’re doing it. That’s what dispensing with mitigation efforts amounts to. It’s just no one wants to say it.

  4. Avatar for kovie kovie says:

    Cities, states and countries can “reopen” as much as they like, but they can’t force businesses to reopen, workers to go back to work or customers to patronize reopened stores and businesses. Of course some will do this, and they will catch the virus and die.

    And what good does that do anyone? This is all about politics and delusion, with no possible good outcomes. It can’t work on a practical level and it will only cause more suffering and death–and there will be a political price for that as well, so it’s not even good politics, however immoral.

    Of course, that’s what you can expect from Repubs, craven politics and policies that make no sense. And I suspect that enough voters will realize this that no matter how much Repubs try to steal the election this fall, they’re going to lose big, at all levels, from school board to president.

    So, bring on the evil stupid, Repubs. You’ll only lose big and kill your own in the process.

  5. Prediction: Thousands of people will flock to movie theaters, restaurants and bars. They’ll be all of the same mindset as the people you see gathered on courthouse steps and lawn protesting mitigation orders. Patronizing those businesses will be a protest in their mind, a middle finger to science and medical experts and Dem politicians. They’ll be owning the libs. Carousing with each other in close proximity, no masks, no distancing, no gloves, no precautions at all will be a badge of honor for them. It will come to the point no self respecting Trumper doesn’t mix and mingle and drink and party and hug and kiss and spit and cough and do just about everything they can do to get sick. Because fuck you, it’s all a hoax anyway.

    I don’t think reopening the economy to public business will be the grand flop many expect. There are plenty of knuckleheads willing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of Trump.

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