I only know of the Netherlands since my family lives there. According to them pretty much everything is open, schools start in 2 weeks. Events and night clubs are still closed. Face masks aren't really used and supermarkets are pretty lax in any measures (just removed some shopping carts while telling people you can only come in with a shopping cart to 'regulate' foot traffic). Cases are going up. They were as low as a 42 cases 3-day average, currently back up to 370 cases 3-day average.

Here (Canada) an expert from sick kids estimated that there's about a 5.3% chance to end up with an infected kid in a class of 30 (elementary schools). Teachers are having second thoughts and some are refusing to go back to school.... That chance is for the current number of estimated infections. School here is still a month away and we just completed phase 3 re-openings yesterday while cases already started to slowly climb after phase 2. By the time school starts the number of active infections could be much higher.

Here in Luxembourg:

Events are closed, gatherings of more than 20 persons are forbidden.

Most services are open, though during this part of the year many companies are closed anyway (collective holiday in the construction and related sectors during the 3 first weeks of August, and many other companies also close doors for the duration as immigrant workers travel to their families abroad and Luxembourgers generally go on holiday), so it's very quiet either way.

This leaflet says it all at the moment. However, due to the rise in cases in the last weeks this may change again soon (though cases are starting to drop again):

https://msan.gouvernement.lu/dam-assets/covid-19/exit/en/Measures-in-place-as-of-24062020.pdf

https://msan.gouvernement.lu/dam-assets/covid-19/fiches_information/en/Fiche-GB-EN.pdf

And here you can see the evolution of the cases and related data in Luxembourg: https://msan.gouvernement.lu/en/graphiques-evolution.html#sg

In denmark, everything is basically back to normal.
Almost no one wears a mask (we never really did the mask thing).
We still try to keep distance, but we're more lax now than just a month or two ago.
handsanitisers at every shop, ect.

We got down to like 250 active cases, in the country.
Now daily infections are starting to rise abit, and active cases are around ~500.
(we're testing more, hopeing to spot more infections, so they can be isolated)

Our "lowest" hospitalsations was down to 16 patients.
Now its currently 18, so its basically the same.... not to far off.

we have 3 people in the ICU with coronavirus (2 on respirators).

Every week or so, someone would die to corona virus.... deaths seem to be dropping still.
But with cases now riseing, maybe a month from now, there will be abit more.


*edit:
By basically back to normal, ofc stuff like night clubs (disco's) and such still arn't open (big crowded events).
They have started asking people to wear a "mask" if your useing collective transportation (bus/trains).

Fun fact, we call these "mund bind" in danish (a mouth binding/covering) (even though they also cover the nose).
Mask as a word is usually left for like halloween, type masks.

Yeah unfortunately they opened back up businesses and everything else like the virus was completely destroyed.

Whats unfortunate is that testing in japan is unlikely to catch very many of these cases and they still found 1,500+ a day (on a weekend).

Japan has only tested ~6,500 people pr 1m population.
(in denmark that number is ~265,000, ei. we've tested like 41 times more pr population than japan has)

Its very likely that therse a high number of infected walking around in japan (more than other places), that they just dont know about, because testing is so low there.

Japan needs to do something fast. Last week they were on a 1.068x daily increase factor, +58% 7 day increase, doubling time of 10 days. It's where you need to go in total lock down to reverse the growth.

Belgium, The Netherland and Denmark and Ireland (although still pretty small numbers) also look very steep for the past week. Even Norway is climbing again. The effect of the re-openings is really starting to show now and it's still the holiday period :/

As in silly news, UK is pondering to close pubs so schools can re-open. (With the hope to keep overall Rt close to 1.0 I suppose). Are teachers in the UK all going to the pub after school lol.

You should also wonder why stores limit capacity, time inside and require face masks while schools can re-open at full capacity for the entire day... Class room size stores here have a limit of 7 people inside, usually by appointment and preferred curb-side pickup. Yet up to 30 into a class room for 6 hours will be fine...

I agree with everything you said.


Except maybe this part:

"As in silly news, UK is pondering to close pubs so schools can re-open. (With the hope to keep overall Rt close to 1.0 I suppose). Are teachers in the UK all going to the pub after school lol."

as I understand it, their logic is both things contribute to the Rt.
So if you remove one, Rt drops, while schools will increase Rt, thus hopefully you get some form of equalisation.
(ei. its better than keeping both pubs + schools open at the same time)

Its a trade off sort of thing.
I dont think thats silly at all, it just means they view kids at schools as more important than pubs and their impact on the economy.


"Yet up to 30 into a class room for 6 hours will be fine..."

It doomed to cause mass spread.
Its gonna be worse in places were the spread is already high.
It'll increase the chances of 1 kid infecting the entire school, and those same kids bringing it back to their parents.

We're about to see alot of countries have dramatic rises in daily cases.


"Belgium, The Netherland and Denmark and Ireland (although still pretty small numbers) also look very steep for the past week. Even Norway is climbing again. The effect of the re-openings is really starting to show now and it's still the holiday period :/ "

We're testing more than before, but that doesnt account for all the new cases.
Still the amount of people hospitalised is still dropping or flat (18 ppl).

We have 3 people in the ICU (in our entire country, of about 5,8m ppl).

Yes its abit of a worry... but until the amount of people hospitalised starts going up, I dont think any drastic messures will be taken.

Yep, I see the logic, trading one for the other. However it's on a different scale.

11.7 million kids in school in the UK, which is mandatory while going to the pub is at your own choice. Also the time spend in schools is generally much longer than in a pub. The number of pubs and schools is actually not that different in the UK (33K vs 47K pubs), however many more people attend schools than pubs.

Rt is already above 1 in the UK the way things are now, so trading one thing for another that's worse isn't going to help. Plus most of those people that like to frequent pubs will find another place to go.


The rising trends are mostly caused by younger people spreading the infection. They need less hospitalizations and also go undetected more, yet still spread the infection. At some point it reaches critical mass and starts spilling over to the older population, that's when you'll see hospitalizations go up again. So waiting for that to happen is doomed to create problems. Early detection is to be able to respond quickly, yet it seems countries continue to take a wait and see approach until the mild cases spill over to those more at risk. Especially with school re-openings looming, an already lower average age of infections is a worrying trend.

What I fear is countries all over the world setting themselves up for big secondary waves in the fall. Creating the perfect storm for this virus to pick up again.

Are you sure?

Well I don't live in the UK, so nope, not sure haha.

However when I went to university, 5 to 6 hours of classes a day, 3 hours of hanging out at the fraternity 'pub' at night once a week, then maybe 10 to 12 hours all together in the weekend. (mostly night clubs which are still closed afaik)

Closing them is better than having both schools / universities and pubs open. Universities have a lot of remote learning nowadays, zoom pubs? Too bad it's kinda hard to drink with a VR helmet on, VR pubs!