The Daily - Why Europe Is Flattening the Curve (and the U.S. Isn’t)

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

As it became clear that Europe was heading into another deadly wave of the coronavirus, most of the continent returned to lockdown. European leaders pushed largely similar messages, asking citizens to take measures to protect one another again, and governments offered broad financial support.Weeks later, the effort seems to be working and infection rates are slowing.In several parts of the United States, it’s a different story. In the Midwest, which is experiencing an explosion of cases similar to that seen earlier in Europe, leaders have not yet managed to come up with a coherent approach to loosen the virus’s grip.Is it too late for America to learn the lessons from Europe?Guests: Matina Stevis-Gridneff, who covers the European Union for The New York Times, and Mitch Smith, a national correspondent for The Times based in the Midwest. We want to hear from you. Fill out our survey about The Daily and other shows at: nytimes.com/thedailysurvey. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Much of Europe went back into lockdown late last month to try to stop the spread of the virus and ease the strain on hospitals.After weeks of warnings that cases were again on the rise, a third surge of coronavirus infection has firmly taken hold in the United States.As cases grow, the pandemic is becoming so widespread in the United States that every American will know someone who has been infected.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the United States and Europe have approached the second wave of the coronavirus in profoundly different ways. My colleagues, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Mitch Smith, on what those two responses look like. It's Tuesday, November 17th.

Matina, you cover Europe for The Times and are based in Belgium. So tell us about how the governments of Europe are responding to this second wave of the coronavirus? Well, Michael, I think by mid-October, the writing was on the wall that the second wave that everyone had feared would eventually arrive was with us. We were seeing exponential increases in cases, hospitals were getting saturated. And the reason for that is that in Europe, cases, hospitals were getting saturated. And the reason for that is that in Europe, we had a horrible first wave, followed by very strict lockdowns, which led us into the beautiful European summer, where people were able to go to the beach and have a break and pretend life is normal. And that was great. But the price that they paid was pretty high. And so on a Wednesday in late October,

I believe it was October 28th, both the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Angela Merkel in almost simultaneous addresses to their nations, announced new lockdowns. I decided that we had to find, from Friday, the confinement that stopped the virus. And heading into partial lockdown, the Dutch Prime Minister said too many people

hadn't been sticking to existing rules as he announced a list of new tougher restrictions. More or less over that last week of October. Ireland has become the latest to toughen up anti-COVID-19 measures, moving the country to the highest level of restrictions, similar to the lockdown last March. The majority of the continent was imposing restrictions on its citizens to contain what was clearly an out-of-control second wave. The House of Commons has approved the four-week lockdown in England,

which starts at midnight tonight. And what are the general features of these lockdowns that occurred, as you said, pretty much at the same time? What do they look like? Generally across the board, pretty much at the same time? What do they look like? Generally across the board, European governments made it quite clear that you should stay at home. In some countries, that's been actually quite strictly enforced. For example, in Greece, you need to text a number and get a sort of automated permission on six different categories of reasons for which you need to leave your home. Oh, wow. So you text your name and number six, and that means you're going out for a little walk or to walk your pet. And if you bump into a police officer, they would check if you've actually sent that text. So while enforcement has ranged in Europe, largely people were told, stay at home, don't do anything unless it's truly

essential. Don't go, you know, popping out for a coffee or a croissant or whatever. But one thing that was different to the first wave is that across the board, in the vast majority of European countries, governments really tried to keep schools open. and that's been a distinctive feature of their response to the second wave. There's been a real effort to get kids to school or childcare and not have them stay at home. So the general approach here in these European countries over the past few weeks is close down most businesses, severely limit people ouvertes, prioriser l'éducation, et plus que tout autre. Exactement. Je suis curieux de savoir comment les leaders dans ces pays expliquent ces décisions,

selon leur disruptivité. Les leaders ont commencé par appeler les gens et dire... Et ne pas céder au poison de la division. Cette période est difficile parce qu'elle éprouve justement notre résilience et notre unité. Si je sais la lassitude et cette impression d'un jour sans fin qui tous nous gagne, nous devons. I know this feeling of the day that never ends. So they started by saying, we know we're asking a huge sacrifice of you,

and here's why we ask it. Key messages included how saturated European hospitals were. Here in Belgium, for example, the government made it very clear that it was so stretched that patients had to be sent to Germany for care. It was so stretched that in some cities in Belgium, nurses were asked to go work if they had COVID and didn't have symptoms. So that honesty and transparency about how dire the situation was

was really fundamental to that message. Beyond that has been this appeal to unity, to societal cohesion, that we're in this together and we have to pull through together. And in some countries, this message has gone out in pretty creative ways. So for example, the German government, which isn't famous for its sense of humor,

released last week a reel or an ad. Ich glaube, das war im Winter 2020, als das ganze Land auf uns schaute. Of this very old man being interviewed and talking about the great battle of his generation. Also fassten wir alle unseren Mut zusammen und taten, was von uns erwartet wurde. great battle of his generation. Only to then go on to say that what was required of us was to stay home and order in and watch TV and not go out. And that was the battle of our generation.

I'm also struck by what you seem to be describing as a kind of coordinated message across different countries. Is that right? I think that's definitely true. We've largely seen similar messages and actually similar policies across the European Union. And I think the reason for that is that there's a shared sense of reality. Of course, there are political and even social disagreements about what the best course of action is. That's the case everywhere. I don't want to make it out like there's this perfect consensus in Europe. But the proximity of these countries means that they're able to look at each other, learn from each other, and ultimately the situation in one country over one border will affect what happens to its next-door neighbor. And there's a real sense of joint fates in that.

Right, so what's good for one country is no doubt good for its neighboring country or two countries over. Precisely. And conversely, if your country is doing so much worse than your neighbor, you're going to be asking questions about why that is. You're going to be looking over that border to your neighbor and holding your government to account and saying, well, hey, here in Belgium, we have really bad outcomes, but over the border in the Netherlands, things seem to be so much better. Why? So the ability to compare and exchange notes has sort of created this positive reinforcement mechanism that the hope is will help all European countries out of the second wave and hopefully the last wave of the coronavirus. Matina, from what you're describing, this sounds like a continent that is largely accepting this second wave of lockdowns. Do I have that right? And if so, I wonder why you think

that is beyond the kind of collective understanding that you've described? I think people are definitely tired. They're definitely angry in some cases. They feel perhaps that lessons should have been learned by their government from their first wave to avert or avoid the second lockdown. But by and large, despite some dissent and certainly despite some groups that see this as either a conspiracy or an assault on their liberties, I think if you take a few steps back, what I see is quite broad societal acceptance of these measures. Remember also, this is Europe. Governments are in people's business, and there's an expectation that they should be so. So an active role from the state in managing the outbreak is expected, and people don't find those interventions as

alien or unusual. It's just part of the political and civic culture on the continent. And there's another thing, which is perhaps a little more material. European governments, even those that don't have a lot of financial means, have shown a fairly humane approach to the citizens that are suffering financially from this crisis by extending support through an array of measures that are costing them billions and billions of euros. So let's start with Germany, which is the biggest, the richest, and the most generous country in Europe in its response to the financial fallout.

You know, suspending tax payments, suspending social security payments, paying businesses to keep their people on board and just put them on furlough by covering most or all of their salaries instead of letting them go. But they even paid out checks to freelance artists, which no other government really has done. So if you were a freelance artist in Berlin, and of course, you know, there were no exhibitions, you were not able to make a living, you registered with the government and within a week, you got a 5,000 euro check in the post, which isn't a lot, but it showed the willingness of the government to support people that,

frankly, in the past and other crises have not really been seen by governments such as freelance artists, for example. And even in smaller and poorer European countries that have much less flexibility in their budgets to be doing this sort of thing. Efforts have been made to support people struggling. So, for example, my parents live in Greece, and Greece doesn't have the most fantastic finances, as a lot of people know. But still, my parents got effectively a tax rebate, which was a real game changer for their financial planning

for the rest of the year. And on top of that, the European Union is rallying to get together a landmark stimulus package that will be distributed across its 27 members over and above national stimulus packages in the new year. And so financial assistance keeps coming in various forms. Of course, it can't last forever, and it will certainly strain the finances of these governments in the long run. But I do think that this is a key reason why,

even in these very strained times for relations between citizens and governments, the rapport has kept going, and people have continued feeling connected to their governments because it's a two-way street. They don't just feel like their governments are telling them what to do, and more importantly, what not to do, or that their governments are just putting in place measures that are taking away their livelihoods. They feel that they're also getting something back.

Mm-hmm. So most important question of all, Matina, is this second lockdown working? Is it starting to flatten the curve? Well, Michael, the first thing I'm going to do is tell you what's happening in Belgium by looking on my Corona Alert app, which informs me that this week we've had 47% fewer cases than last week and 24% fewer hospitalizations, which means that here in Belgium, we're turning the corner. Similarly, other countries that implemented lockdowns around the same time as Belgium are doing better. The Czech Republic, once the worst infection rate in Europe, also shows similar promising signs. Finland, Ireland, similar trends. And there's every reason to believe

that bigger countries such as Germany or France are just behind us. They implemented their lockdowns a little later. They have their own conditions to contend with at home, but their rate of infection is already slowing down. And so the feeling is that the measures are working, which means that they are actually being applied as well. Right. Which means that people are likely to keep following them because there's an immediate reward for abiding by these rules. Precisely. You can see that things are getting better. And remember, there's always the promise of a semi-normal holiday season at the end of the year. And that's, I think, something that's keeping people going. That's keeping people going.

I hope that perhaps there can be small celebrations of the holidays, although governments are cautioning and trying to convince everyone to stay put and stay away from elderly relatives. But there is a feeling that if we get this under control by mid-December, then we may, we just may be able to have a holiday season of sorts. Well, Martina, stay safe and thank you for your time. Thanks so much, Michael. We'll be right back. So Mitch, you're a national correspondent at The Times based in the Midwest, the region that is now being hit the hardest in the U.S. by the virus. We just spoke to our colleague, Matina, about how Europe is responding to its second wave. And it's a story of coordination and communication. So let's talk about how that compares with what the governments in the Midwest are doing right now. Yeah, well, it looks very, very different here.

But you are right. The Midwest is in really rough, dire shape, and it has been for some time. Case numbers just continue to explode. 13 of the 14 metro areas in the country with the highest rates of recent cases are in the Midwest. Six of the seven states in the country with the highest rates of recent cases in the Midwest. It's rising pretty much everywhere in the Midwest. Six of the seven states in the country with the highest rates of recent cases

in the Midwest. It's rising pretty much everywhere in the region. You have governors talking about hospital capacity concerns and really approaching using language that we just haven't seen before. The nation has been swept by a COVID storm that has taken Illinois' positivity rate from low single digits to the mid-teens. And with nearly no mitigations in the states bordering us and no national strategy to reduce the spread, we're in for a very difficult next few months. But even still, the restrictions are generally much looser than what you're seeing overseas. And they vary a lot from state to state, from county to county. It just looks a lot different.

So tell me about these restrictions. Sure. Let me start with kind of the least amount of restrictions. And that would be South Dakota. That's a state where there is no mask mandate. There is no stay-at-home order. There has not been. And even though cases are extremely high there,

as they are in much of the region, there does not seem to be any movement toward that. And I want to remind you all of this because while we were working together and we were preparing as a state, many other states were taking a very different approach. Some ordered their citizens to shelter in place, ordered their businesses to lock down, and ordered their churches to close.

Governor Kristi Noem, she's a Republican, and she's been really outspoken for months now about letting people make their own choices. And day after day, night after night, they insisted that every single decision I was making was wrong, that I was foolish to trust my people. And I was even sillier to respect the oaths that I took. They told me I should shut my state down. And she's acted accordingly and has not imposed the sorts of things we've seen some of her peers go for. She's even had... South Dakota, the land of things we've seen some of her peers go for. She's even had... South Dakota, the land of the free. Commercials on Fox News encouraging people to visit her state at some point.

We're a place to safely explore. Huh. During this pandemic. That's when the commercials aired, yep. We're open for opportunity and always will be. I'm Governor Kristi Noem. Celebrate what makes America great. Are there any restrictions in South Dakota of any kind as the second wave moves in?

Statewide, not really. Sioux Falls, the largest city in the state last week, considered a mask mandate and that failed. Huh. Sioux Falls has the eighth most cases per capita in recent weeks of any metro area in the country. So Mitch, if we're going from least restrictive to more restrictive, what state is next? So next I'd go to Ohio, which is a state where the Republican governor, Mike DeWine,

has been outspoken for many months about just how severe this is. That's a state that's had a mask mandate now, that's had some restrictions in place on businesses, that's been trying to kind of thread that needle. They pointed to small gatherings as a real center of transmission in that state. We'll be issuing a new order in the next few days that will place significant new restrictions on these social activities. And so, for instance, they issued new guidance about wedding receptions. And so guests must be seated all the time. The order also requires everyone to be seated, everyone to wear a mask unless they are actively consuming food or drinks. But you can still have a first dance. So not everybody can dance, but you can still have the first dance. You can toss the bouquet, that's fine. You can cut the cake, but no buffets. And so trying to

find some balance and to not completely close down while regulating dancing at wedding receptions, that's kind of where you are in a place like Ohio. But this is news to me. You can still hold an indoor wedding in the state of Ohio. That is correct. Okay, so what is the most restrictive Midwestern state at this point in the second wave? Sure. Well, Michigan would be the state that has gone the furthest this time. It's a state with a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Republican-controlled state legislature,

and if you've paid attention at all to the election this year, a very divided citizenry. This is a place where there's wide differences in schools of thought on how to approach this. And over the weekend, Governor Whitmer came out and told high schools and colleges that they would have to close. We are at the precipice and we need to take some action because as the weather gets colder and people spend more time indoors, this virus will spread.

More people will get sick and there will be more fatalities. She said that bars and restaurants can't be open for indoor dining anymore. Casinos, movie theaters, group exercise classes all shutting down. It's not a lockdown, but it's as close as anywhere in the Midwest has come since spring. Our response is strongest if we are unified and all in this together. On the right, you have serious criticism of the governor for closing down businesses, for closing down schools. You had the state Republican chairman saying she's showing contempt for the people's elected representatives

by not going through the Republican-controlled legislature to implement these rules. You have at least one state lawmaker saying she should be impeached. I mean, that's how divergent the views are on these issues. And Mitch, we know that there has been an economic health versus public health debate that has defined this divide in the country pretty much since the beginning of the pandemic. But what's the story of the resistance in the Midwest to these measures right now, given the profound levels of infection there? Well, I think it's a real mix of things.

And these are states that are not monolithic. But I think some of it's rooted in that some states that went much further in the spring didn't ever have that many cases. And so perhaps that's a sign that things worked. I think in some corners that's seen as a sign that they lost their livelihood or lost their business when maybe they didn't need to. I think you also have in some parts of the region genuine skepticism of government, a libertarian streak, an independent tradition in many of these states and not necessarily a lot of trust in the government to look out for people like them,

to see it through so that when this is over, they come out okay on the other side. Finally, you got to look too to see how the federal messaging has been frankly inconsistent with what some of these governors are saying. You have a president who many people in this region admire, voted for, trust, who has had really mixed messages on how to handle this. And I think you continue to see that playing out. And just on Sunday, for instance, when Governor Whitmer comes out with new restrictions and almost immediately, Dr. Scott Atlas,

the president's coronavirus advisor, goes on Twitter to criticize her. He says, the only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. So there's the tension, a real dissonance at time between different leaders' messages, between state and federal. And if you're a person in Michigan, you're being told one thing by your state leader and another thing from the White House. Right. So if we go back to Europe for a moment, Mitch,

and I know that you are quite far away from Europe, what Mattino told us was that the reason why things seem to be working in Europe, why there's so much buy-in, is because there is a history of the government playing this role in people's lives that is not what you are describing in the Midwest. There is a uniform message from government leaders at multiple levels. Again, we totally lack that here, as you just explained. And finally, there's substantial federal financial assistance, which of course we haven't had in the U.S. because there hasn't been a major federal stimulus package for months now. That's right. That's important context to understanding how this is being received. There's a lot of genuine, understandable fear about what the future holds

if we have to hunker down again. Mitch, is there a version where this Patrick approach can somehow work, that it can flatten the curve? Well, I think we sure hope so. I think that you're also seeing some signs that people are taking this more seriously. I talked to the mayor of Sioux City, Iowa, not long ago, a place that has among the most cases total per capita in the country over the whole pandemic. He was at an event. He said almost everyone was wearing a mask. And even a few weeks before, that wouldn't have been the case. And he pointed to the governor of Iowa coming out and saying, you have to wear masks if you're going to an event. And so I think that one thing that matters here is that some of these leaders that have held off a long time and imposing restrictions that have frustrated particularly some liberals about how they've approached this is that when people in those states see them going on TV with deep concern in their voice saying,

listen, the hospitals are filling up and we've got to do something, I think there's a real hope that people, even if it's not spelled out to the letter in some executive order, take action and try to help themselves and help their community. Because I think this is a region

where people care a lot about other people. This is a region where people care a lot about their towns, about their neighbors. And so I think as you see this escalate, as you see the concern grow and the faces and the voices of the people they elect, that the sincere hope is that it starts to have an impact. And at the very least, that we can preserve hospital capacity, and that people who do get sick can get the best treatment available and have a fighting shot. It sounds like what you're saying is that the scenario here that leads to the curve being flattened might be that things get so bad that people in the Midwest listen to their government officials, not because they're required to,

but because at a certain point, it'll just seem like there's no other choice. I fear that may be true. You continue to see case numbers rise across the Midwest. I look every day looking for some glimmer that a state's peaking, a state's leveling off, that there's progress coming. But so far, it just looks really bleak and it's really tragic.

Well, Mitch, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. A week after a similar announcement from Pfizer, the drugmaker Moderna said that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5% effective in a large clinical trial. Both Moderna and Pfizer plan to quickly apply for emergency authorization from the U.S. government to begin vaccinating the public. But a vaccine that is widely available is still likely months away.

And the Times reports that President Trump is expected to order the withdrawal of thousands of American troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia by the time he leaves office, using his final weeks to pull back as many troops as possible across the world. But the plan is running into resistance from Trump's own national security advisors, who are warning him that a rapid drawdown could have catastrophic consequences within each of those countries. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.