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LA times: For our coronavirus future, we look to Europe, which is warily easing some restrictions

LA times: For our coronavirus future, we look to Europe, which is warily easing some restrictions

person using magnifying glass enlarging the appearance of his nose and sunglasses
Spain began easing parts of its coronavirus lockdown Monday, and other Western European countries such as Italy and Austria appeared poised to follow suit with fewer restrictions on public activities.
But will the easing of constraints, however limited, prove to be a beacon of hope or a cautionary tale?
To onlookers in the United States, where many people are staying at home to help curb the spread of the virus, events in hard-hit European nations have been like dispatches from the future. Before COVID-19 fully established itself in hot spots such as New York, it devastated vulnerable Spanish nursing homes, filled the obituary pages of Italian provincial newspapers, and unnerved French villagers with a wave of urban refugees.
Now, the death rate across much of Western Europe apparently is beginning to level off. With President Trump musing about at least a partial reopening of the U.S. economy in May, these European countries — often grouped with the United States as advanced democracies with modern medical systems — might by then be experiencing a glimmer of normality, or showing signs of a new cycle of infection, illness and death.
Within Europe, as in the U.S., governments are wrestling with the same decisions, with varying local circumstances. How best to protect essential workers. How to balance considerations of public health and economic harm. How to shield the elderly and other vulnerable individuals, while allowing those who are healthy to venture out.
As health officials constantly admonish, actions taken a few weeks ago have a crucial bearing on what will happen today or tomorrow. And that will in turn affect the epidemiological picture weeks from now.


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