Covid Restrictions Eased Again
As of today, cinemas are open. We ate out today.
This is the main street Aleksanterinkatu running from the east to the west.
Rautatienkatu. Pubs and restaurants have been open normally since June 1.
The local go club's regular meeting place since the moisture damage caused our old place to shut down last November. It seems to be open. Our club hasn't met, yet. We stopped in March because one of the regulars has a wife who works with risk groups. Starting regular meetings is under consideration now.
Vapaudenkatu leading to the market square. That's a city bus.
Our old regular meeting place Pub Hiidenkivi. When I peeked in through the windows, it wasn't open. It was closed four months before all pubs and restaurants were closed because of Covid-19. There was a pipe leak and moisture damage in the bathroom. The owner was probably covered by insurance for that. But the Covid lockdown came right after the renovation job should've been done. It's not looking good. It's a cheap pub but the atmosphere has always been relaxed and friendly. I hope it won't be closed permanently.
The street may look empty by your standards. This is quite normal around here, which may be part of the reason why the epidemic is dying down here. The population is 5.6 million. There were 56 new reported cases between June 22 and June 28. No one is in intensive care because of Covid-19. There are 24 people hospitalized because of it. The last R0 number estimate for Finland that I saw a couple of weeks ago put that number between 0.4 and 0.75.
https://twitter.com/markku_jantunen/status/1278356129211351040
Twitter: https://twitter.com/markku_jantunen/status/1278356129211351040
Glad to see it is opening up there. We are locking down businesses again here.
Crazy times.
Crazy times, indeed.
Hmmm, we are re-tightening.
The whole country or just some states?
The decision is made by the states but more and more are going toward re-tightening.
Things are slowly getting back to "normal" in England. I'm not sure if we should be, since we didn't handle the virus as well as Finland, but so far so good.
England has over ten times the population, 10 million of whom live in London. London is the most connected city of the entire world save for NYC. Controlling something like Covid-19 is difficult in a country like England.
The difference between Finland and Sweden can most likely be attributed to Sweden not having anything like the Emergency Powers Act except for wartime. The quick and strong response in the beginning made the difference and caused people to behave differently. The Swedish parliament would've had to create something like the laws here from scratch and that would've been a long debate and not doable in a couple of weeks. That's the political reality, which is why I think they opted for going for herd immunity. The Emergency Powers Act ceased to be in effect on June 16. I hope it will not be needed again.