Europeans see endemic light at end of pandemic tunnel | Coronavirus pandemic News
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Berlin, Germany – This week, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told his country that it was the right time to start thinking differently about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When we have this [surge] behind us … we can start reopening, step by step, ”he told local media. “It’s up to you now to anticipate this.”
The German politician, who is a professor of epidemiology, is not the only European official to make this call.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has already spoken out about his plan to start treating coronavirus like the flu. Spain “should learn to live with it, as we do with many other viruses,” he said.
French Health Minister Olivier Veran has also suggested that this could be the last wave of the pandemic.
The argument is that although infections caused by the more infectious variant of the Omicron virus are growing rapidly, serious cases and hospital admissions have not grown at the same rate.
COVID-19 would not completely disappear, but it would be managed. The disease would become endemic rather than pandemic.
Berlin merchant Emily Pelich welcomes calls for a different study of COVID-19.
Pelich opened his home appliance store, Nos, after the first German blockade in May 2020. But for him, the most difficult part of starting a business in the middle of a pandemic is not necessarily logistical. “It’s been all uncertainty,” Al Jazeera said. “You didn’t know what was going to happen week after week.”
Today, the COVID-19 crisis is still classified as a pandemic in Europe. And despite all the optimism about the potential end of the two-year health crisis, any positive impact on business will take time.
Pelich says there are fewer people on the street and in his shop in the German capital, where COVID-19 infections are still growing rapidly. “We still can’t compare it to Spain or France,” he said.
The impact of the forthcoming reclassification of COVID-19 has not yet had a severe impact on the affected sectors as well.
“Life goes on. We have to learn to live with this,” the manager of a ship’s service in Barcelona told Al Jazeera, asking him to keep his last name because he is not allowed to speak on behalf of his company.
His prime minister has said he agrees with the changing stance on the pandemic, but has yet to see a pivot in a boom in business. “We haven’t noticed any differences in this year’s bookings,” he said. “[The year] 2020 was a tremendous year. No planes or tourists. It was better last year. But it’s going to be too early to tell what this year will be like. “
The surrounding Portugal is often described as one of the European countries capable of being called endemic COVID-19, with about 98 percent of the eligible population being vaccinated.
“We returned to 2019 levels last summer,” the Lisbon-based boat charter operator confirmed, asking Al Jazeera to protect the privacy of his last name. “But unfortunately, now people are canceling it again.”
The number of infections is also growing significantly in Portugal.
Changing consumer behavior
For experts who monitor consumer behavior during a pandemic, all of this makes sense.
“One of the things we’ve seen during the pandemic is that people are doing their calculations, almost independent of what their government or institutions have said,” explained Sven Smit, president of the McKinsey Global Institute, for economic management consulting for international management consulting. .
People react to what the institutes and governments say, but also to what they see on the ground.
Smith cites data on so-called “discretionary mobility,” which is when people leave home to buy food for reasons other than work.
“In most countries, that’s it [discretionary mobility] it is almost entirely in line with what is happening in hospitals and the mortality rate, ”explained Smith. “People react to what the institutes and governments say, but also to what they see on the ground, what they see is happening to friends and family.”
So for companies, moving from pandemic to endemic will not be like hitting a switch.
There will be a transition phase, as experts from Boston Consulting Group have suggested, that could be between six and nine months in a final strategy document.
“Right now, we’re all waiting,” said Grace Lordan, a UK economist and director of the London School of Economics’ Inclusion Initiative.
“What’s so fascinating about human behavior is that we follow so many other and comparable ones,” he told Al Jazeera. “We’re not going to reach a tipping point until 30-50 percent of the population starts reacting. Then we will see that things start to adjust, returning to a stable state. “
Who wins in the new normalcy?
During the pandemic, European economies saw an acceleration of existing business and cultural trends. Things like online shopping, more digital health care, and working from home became more popular. They were exposed to virus-sensitive sectors that affected personal relationships or travel, such as hospitality, tourism, retail, or trade fairs.
This month, as markets began to react to the promised change from a pandemic to an endemic one, some of the winners of the crisis were unable to sustain their lucrative trajectory.
HelloFresh and Delivery Hero German food specialists, U.S. entertainment giant Netflix, home exercise company Peloton, and Chegg online education specialists have been roughly involved since the beginning of the year.
Meanwhile, companies affected by the crisis have begun to anticipate better times.
We will not reach a turning point until 30 to 50 percent of the population starts to react.
In its latest bulletin, the European Central Bank stated that by the end of 2021 locals were slowly but surely returning from spending money on goods to services. “The trade, transport and hospitality sector grew by almost 7 per cent quarter-on-quarter in the third quarter. [of 2021]”While the arts and recreation sector grew by 12 per cent,” the bank said.
Of course, all of this is still part of the transition. But who is likely to win in the long run when COVID-19 is considered endemic?
To some extent, you can tell which trends to follow by assessing how “sticky” they are, as McKinsey’s Smit explains.
“It’s actually pretty simple,” the Amsterdam researcher said. “If everyone who has experienced this new behavior has enjoyed it, it will stay.”
For example, everyone involved found it effective, efficient, and convenient to conduct an initial medical consultation with a doctor or online, Smit said.
At the other end of the scale, home education was not particularly popular with anyone. “So when the schools open, people will come back,” he said. Remote health care, on the other hand, is likely.
Working from home it’s somewhere in the middle. Some companies plan to keep it, while others want to return employees to the office.
The extent to which all of these changes are “blind” will be fixed in the transition phase. Then the next steps will be the sustained reactions of “new normalcy”.
For example, Lordan noted, “In every country, corporations make those decisions [about things like working from home] they are also the lifeblood of every small and medium-sized business in the area. ”
If large companies decide that employees can work from home more often in the future, “you will see a change in the look of the city,” Lordan argued. For example, it is likely that there will be more restaurants in the neighborhoods where professionals work from home.
“Basically [the transition] it will bring surprises to some sectors until everything is fixed, ”said the economist.
For the Pelich merchant in Berlin, a little certainty is also helpful. “I think now we can all imagine that things will get better again in the summer, then maybe we’ll see another rise in the winter,” he concluded. “And we need strategies for that.”
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