Can Greece avert a second wave of Covid?
The spike in new infections in Greece is raising concerns about a 'second wave'. The government has responded with renewed restrictions including all taverns, bars and discos in numerous well-known holiday regions having to close by midnight. Whereas anxiety is palpable in some media, others seek to calm fears.
A national tragedy is imminent
The situation is very dangerous, warns the online platform News247:
“The efforts of the people and the authorities in our country were successful up until May. ... However, the figures in recent days show what happened then, and the outlook for the near future is a national tragedy. The haste and sloppiness with which the efforts of the weeks of quarantine were suddenly reinterpreted as a phase we had overcome raise many questions. ... We have plunged from a phase in which we had to write a text message before leaving the house into a phase in which we are calling out to tourists: 'Just come as you are, as long as you bring your wallets.'”
It isn't other people's fault
The worst thing is that people are looking for scapegoats everywhere, columnist Lefteris Charalampopoulos finds in To Vima:
“It's the tourists' fault. ... It's the fault of the holidaymakers who went to the islands rather than staying in the Athens heat. It's the fault of the young people who go dancing and have fun. It's the fault of the waiter who, after five hours in the sun, took off his mask for a moment. These are reactions of fear and panic rather than rational thinking. Reactions that prevent us from seeing the real problems. There are problems with the management of the pandemic that are not the fault of our fellow human beings. Instead, it seems that not all the necessary plans were made and not all the necessary measures were implemented.”