The reprieve of summer feels a long ago, and Europe is entering a serious funk.
This is not like the Spring lockdowns in Europe, when people confined to their homes ventured onto balconies in the evenings to applaud health care workers. People are seriously sick of it now, especially the youth. Many people remain scared of covid-19, but they are frustrated by restrictions — and growing angry and rebellious.
Caterina Gramaglia, 42, a theater actress in Rome, said that the compared with the Spring, she now feels more unmoored, less certain what to do. Theaters have again been closed in Italy. The first , for her, it was a chance for stillness, for reflection. But now, she said, “it’s a of great dread and fear.”
“We are generally used to seek and find solutions,” said Gramaglia. “But now we don’t know where to go. There is a sort of general desperation.”
Police in Italy this week fired tear gas to disperse rioting crowds in the northern cities of Turin and Milan, after protests against the latest round of anti-coronavirus restrictions flared into violence.
In Germany, thousands of protesters from the hospitality industry marched toward the chancellery, as Angela Merkel met with regional leaders to discuss a “lockdown light” that could see restaurants close, but schools and day cares stay open.
In Liverpool, England, now suffering under regional lockdown, gym owners defied police orders to shut down, saying the facilities needed to stay open — not just for the money, but for their member’s mental health.
The smugness in Europe about having bested the Americans under President Trump is fading with the daily record-breaking counts.
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency cabinet meeting on how to respond to a second wave of infections that has decidedly eluded the government’s control.
“We had predicted there would be this second wave, but we ourselves are surprised by the brutality of what’s been happening over the past ten days,” Jean-François Delfraissy, an immunologist and the chair of the French government’s scientific advisory covid-19 response board, told France’s RTL radio.
In Belgium, a dim autumn gray settled over the country just as it took the crown as the most-infected hotspot in Europe. Public health officials say one percent of the Belgian population could soon be sick with covid-19 on any given day.
Belgians this of year are usually packing their bags ahead of fall school holidays that begin Monday. They board bargain airline flights to Turkey and the south of France. They grab a final dose of foreign sunshine before settling in for their drizzly winter.
This year, though, Belgian leaders are telling citizens the fall break is a perfect to sit inside at home and not spread the virus.
With Christmas markets already canceled, and restaurants and bars shuttered, there are few outlets for relief for Belgians these days. One prominent doctor this week even advocated postponing Christmas celebrations until next summer.
“To slow down the curve, we have to imagine different holidays,” Frédérique Jacobs, the head of the infectious-disease department of the Erasme Brussels hospital, told the Belgian RTBF broadcaster on Monday.
“Or even postponing those end-of-the-year and Christmas parties to July or August when it is sunny,” he said.
In Spain, the government declared a new state of emergency this week that enabled a raft of restrictions nationwide, including an 11 p.m. curfew.
“I think the main feeling when I think about this lasting over the next few months is loneliness,” said Isabella D’Ambrosio, , who works for the United Way’s Spain communications office in Madrid.
“The less we can do with friends, the more we have to stay at home. Winter is already a little bit sadder and more nostalgic,” she said.
D’Ambrosio said, “this weekend is my friend’s birthday and it’s Halloween. Normally, we’d have a party or go to a club, but that’s not an option. The limitation of six people in social gatherings is a real problem. That means you have to select people and then tell them, ‘No, you can’t bring your boyfriend or girlfriend.’ It gets stressful.”
In Italy, the massive first wave of the virus provoked a sense of unity that surprised even Italians.
They sang from apartment balconies during the lockdown. They adhered to the rigid rules. Signs saying “Andrà tutto bene” — everything will be all right — went up across the country, remaining there into the summer, as the infection rate plummeted and Italians grew prideful of their worst-to-first response.
But that feeling has been replaced by discontent, and by anger toward political leaders who had assured Italians they would not fall back into emergency.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte pledged in August that Italians could face an Autumn “without limiting economic activities.” That promise has crumbled.
When the governor of Campania proposed a lockdown last week, blowback — and violent street protests — caused him to back away.
With bars and restaurants across Italy ordered to shutter at 6 p.m., piazzas in major cities have turned into nighttime theaters for far-right groups and agitators, who have thrown homemade explosives, set garbage cans on fire, and been repelled by water cannons from police.
“Freedom, freedom, freedom,” protesters chanted in Rome on Tuesday night.
While Germany has escaped the more stringent lockdowns, coronavirus restrictions have transformed Berlin, known for its -hour nightlife, thumping techno clubs and vibrant arts scene. As the government tries to keep schools and businesses open, it has urged young people to stop the parties.
“It’s frustrating, but I understand,” said Agnieszka Krzyzanska, 27, as she ate brunch at Allan’s Breakfast Club, a hip cafe in Berlin’s eastern Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood that serves eggs Benedict and cocktails to an international crowd.
“It’s killing the scene,” she said. “So many people here depend on the nightlife, mentally and financially.”
Her friend David Garcea, 43, who moved from Spain in June as soon as Europe’s borders opened, said it was a “totally different city” than the one he knew before the pandemic.
Berlin bars and restaurants must already close by 11 p.m. Krzyzanska said the measures don’t make sense, with the virus no more infectious at night. “I say it’s too much,” she said.
But the proprietor Allan Bourbon, 46, wasn’t so sure. “Go to France and then say it’s too much,” he said, sipping on an early afternoon Pernod, referring to the rocketing cases. “It’s living La Vida Loca when you have lockdown here.”
A new one is inevitable, he said, and if there’s no dine-in option, he’ll close in the week. There’s not enough foot traffic, and their food isn’t well suited for delivery. He hopes things will open up again before Christmas.
“It’d be a shame,” said Sebastian Platzer, 23, of the potential for a new lockdown, while locking up his bike from a ride out on a sunny day in Berlin’s Schöneberg neighborhood.
He said he’ll miss indoor sports like bouldering and working out in gyms. “In the summer months, we weren’t really much affected by the lockdown, but now we’ll feel it when the winter is coming and everything is closed,” he said. “And that’s not very fun.”
In Belfast, food bank manager Sinead McKinley and her colleagues are helping hundreds of families in some of the most deprived areas of the city access hot meals and food parcels.
“People are so fatigued. The weather is crap, they don’t have the Internet they need to educate at home, and they are going hungry,” she said.
“During the first lockdown it felt different,” McKinley said.
“This it really is despair.”
James McAuley in Paris, Quentin Ariès in Brussels, Amanda Ferguson in Belfast and Pamela Rolfe in Madrid contributed to this report.