and vice versa! We're also curious to see how you look at it
As for me: Belgium doesn't have enough testing capacity. No clue if our leaders checked with our German neighbors or not, because they appear to have more than enough. Hence, the virus spread quite rapidly resulting in quite severe countermeasures. We can only leave our homes for the following:
* going to work
* shopping essentials (food, drugs; only legal drugs, of course ;-))
* exercise: a walk or bicycle ride (both with a maximum of 1 non-family member, keeping him/her at a minimum distance of 1.5m)
Those who can, have to work from home. Those who cannot work from home, go to their regular work place IF it is safe (social distancing of 1.5m). If this cannot be garanteed, they are temporarily unemployed. About a quarter of our workforces is now sitting at home on temporary unemployment.
It is currently estimated that all of this will cost us €60Bn, or about 20% of our normal GDP.
The biggest impact for me is: sometimes there are queues at the supermarket (because only so many people are allowed in at the same time), once inside, a number of shelves are empty. So you really feel like living in some communist regime...
Social contact is prohibited, so you cannot meet up with friends. Not for sports activities, not for a nice dinner in a cozy restaurant, ...
It is unreal to me and almost everyone I know that this is happening here. We all see Ebola outbreaks every now and then in Africa. We even remember SARS. But we had some sort of arrogance that this was solely reserved for countries far away. Those suffering from a feeling of superiority versus other parts of the world have their noses pressed to the hard facts now... Still, some people don't seem to realise what is actually happening and it's happening here.
To sum it up: the impact until today is quite limited for me, so I'm not complaining, rather happy to be healthy :-) |