Get ready for an endless coronavirus winter – POLITICO

This is the new normal.

Hospitals crowded with the vaccinated and not. Riots in the streets. Masks in the Christmas markets — if they’re open at all.

After several months of rolled-back restrictions caused cases to rise, people saw what “living with the virus” looked like. And they didn’t like it.

Then come the inevitable policy reversals: mask mandates and lockdowns, even in highly vaccinated areas, to stave off catastrophe in the winter months. And people don’t like that, either.

The hard reality: The coronavirus vaccines are medical miracles, but they’re not infallible. And with the predominance of the highly contagious Delta variant, relatively lax restrictions and large minorities of the population declining to be jabbed, the pandemic is back in full force across Europe.

Germany hit an all-time record number of weekly infections on Wednesday, at a weekly rate of more than 400 per 100,000 people. It’s juggling its own overcrowded ICUs in the south and east while taking in Dutch patients on its western border. The Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland are struggling to process PCR tests, while low vaccination coverage in Eastern Europe has fueled brutally high death rates.

Current vaccination levels around the EU are “insufficient to limit the burden of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations over the winter months,” said the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control Director Andrea Ammon on Wednesday. Public health measures should be “applied now,” she said — and could still be needed at Christmas if things don’t improve.

The latest wave is a reminder, public health experts say, that there’s no telling when bare-faced, indiscriminate mingling can return in earnest.

“Whenever you lift measures, this virus is learning how to cheat us,” said Walter Ricciardi, a top adviser to the Italian health ministry. With the Delta variant, far more transmissible than the original version, neither vaccines nor social distancing can do the job alone.

“Unless we use all the weapons together in a rational way, we will never [get back] to normal, at least in the short term,” Ricciardi said. “We will have to spend the next two, three years like this, you know, with a sequence of pandemic waves.”

Back in lockdown

Austria proved the days of universal stay-at-home orders are not yet over. Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said he opted for a 10-day lockdown not just to save the health system but to prompt Austrians — a third of whom refuse to be vaccinated — to sit and think about their choices.

In an interview with POLITICO, he spoke of “creating an opportunity… in the sense that we want to get out of this vicious circle of confused waves and lockdown discussions.”

In case people don’t seize that opportunity on their own, Austria’s vaccine mandate is planned for February 1.

Even in Portugal, where virtually everyone eligible has been fully vaccinated — more than 86 percent of the population — “it is crucial to ensure that the right message is communicated to the population,” said Sofia Ribeiro, a…