Can’t speak for Nick but there has been one poster here who has reveled in blaming Americans for a spike in the cases in Ireland. In fact, she has of course jumped onto this discussion.

"The Europeans" don't exist, but I point to the successes of the Nordic countries, sans Sweden of course, and of Germany, Austria.
I don't think anyone is pointing a finger at Americans, I think it's more a worry and pity response.

The Netherlands is doing worse than the US, so we've got our own boat to row.

It is entirely true that infection rates are much higher in a lot of Europe than in the United States, but I would attribute this to two main reasons: 1) much more testing in Europe and 2) much higher population density than a lot of the United States.

I don't think many Euro countries are allowing US citizens to visit so can't blame us. Our UK friends aren't allowed many places and have canceled trips. They are having a big dog show but with a lot of outdoor space and social distancing. Our friends in Dublin would just like the pubs to open or they will be many closing their doors. A cheese toastie doesn't count as food at one of our favs. We have friends in South Korea and they are very limited to where they can go off base. MWR is not doing the normal trips anymore and the US bases are restricting travel.

My friend in the UK is in a vaccine study and had a sinus infection this week. They brought her in and ran tests on her pronto. She said it is a bit harder for the average person to get tested. Must show one of the covid signs. She is in a London suburb. How is Paris with testing?
We do have states with high rates. NO social distancing in line for early voting this morning. The line was long and no space. We are going back early am and try again. I also noticed not a lot of masks.

I am fortunate to live in a state (Massachusetts) that has an intelligent, sensible, and compassionate governor (Charlie Baker) who has mandated wearing masks and practicing social distancing! If you don't wear a mask, you are not allowed in. And this law is enforced! I have witnessed store managers and employees, restaurant workers, grocery store workers, etc. ask people to leave if they aren't wearing a mask. We voted on Saturday in person. We live in a small town, so there were no lines. But the few people who were voting wore masks and were 6 feet apart. Of course, if they weren't, they wouldn't have been allowed in to our Town Hall. Personally, I think the people who don't wear masks are stupid, selfish, and reckless, and don't care if they are asymptomatic and infect someone. I would feel personally responsible if I infected someone, and that person got sick. And I would feel awful if that person died or ended up in the hospital for months.

This is not a sporting competition, or a league table. These are people dying.
How our we going to judge "who did best" when all this is over?

By one criteria, Europe (and by using that term I'll stick to UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany - because the combined populations of those countries is approx that of the USA) managed the pandemic in a better way, certainly until the end of summer because it did not become quite such a political issue.

Other forums were absolutely full, back in March and April, of Americans saying "but we are doing so much better than Europe", Look at the graphs for new cases and deaths. Europe got the virus "under control" from about June to September. All 5 mentioned countries got daily deaths (by 7 day average) down below 10 a day. In Contrast US deaths have never dropped below 500 a day by the same 7 day average measure. This may be down to geography and population density, it may be that Europe has hit second wave, while the US never really exited the first.

My personal feeling is that the European outbreaks are a direct result of summer holidays in late July, Aug and "Corona fatigue". I have no issue with restricting entry into the UK/Europe/USA - Until this is over, it seems a perfectly sensible option.

Willit, agree. I don't feel we would be very welcomed anywhere right now. PA, NJ, NY, and CT have formed their own little bubble and can't blame them. My niece and her fam were to go to Colorado for Thanksgiving but she can't quarantine on return to NY so they can't go now. We got extensions on Eurostar and hoping our Paris hotel will do the same, if not we eat the loss. We got our refund from Virgin, took five months but it came through. I just feel my state is in a big mess. No restrictions and we are seeing the numbers climb. Once again they want to blame bars.

I am so sorry for Ireland & Scotland. In Germany, when an area hits a certain point, bars have to close at 10 p.m. But until then, they can serve alcohol. The feeling seems to be that bars and parties, where people don't wear masks and don't distance from each other, are the major culprits.

Also want to say that the Oktoberfest was canceled in the spring (don't remember exactly but may have been April or May), when all of Europe was on a lockdown. It had to be canceled that early because that's how long it takes to get stuff out of warehouses and get tents & rides set up. Right now, some Christmas markets have been canceled, but the one in Munich has not yet been canceled.

I think this is another reminder not to lump all European countries together, as each one is fighting this differently. Again, in Germany, I see the plea to avoid another national shutdown accompanies almost all notices of restrictions.

Travel is showing up as another huge problem area. Berchtesgaden has been shut down because they are experiencing a huge surge in cases. And the hotel next to me is showing lots of empty parking spaces for the first time since they were allowed to re-open. Chancellor Merkel recently asked people to just stay home and not travel through the winter.

Another possibility that is starting to be talked about is that the lack of air conditioning might have been a factor in keeping most of Germany low in infection -- all of our rooms have open windows, especially in the summer. Some are speculating that air conditioning & closed spaces in the US has added to their high rates of infection.

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Germany's response to the pandemic has been exemplary: The country locked down hard ans early. It already has a excellent public health set up. The number of hospital beds and ICU beds is significantly higher than most other European countries.

Not all of US has A/C. Many schools don’t. It’s fairly common where I live for businesses or individuals to just open the windows and doors for air circulation.

travel definitely added to high rates of infection. I can buy closed spaces/poor ventilation, although there are so many old buildings in Europe that if that’s the case, I think the US has the edge. But I just think it was that people didn’t take it seriously.

Qantas has announced in today's news that it does not expect to open flights between Australia and the UK and between Australian and the USA until late 2021, at the earliest. While I realise that this post is not about those routes, it is indicative that some of us at least are staying local for quite some time to come. Australians love to travel but most of us want our international borders to stay closed until it's safe to do otherwise and I guess Qantas is seeing that too.

I've optimistically rebooked for the UK in July '21. We'll see. I'm really hoping things will be normalish, but failing that, I'm hoping for some travel corridor arrangement. The tickets can be changed without penalty, and while I probably will start to book hotels, nothing that can't be cancelled or easily changed. We've been trying to take this trip for nearly a decade, so maybe this time things will work out.

a lot of the European countries are going back into lockdown now because of the soaring number of cases.
In Melbourne we were in lock down for about 7 months and looked at the European summer in shock. Europe had a pretty much a party all summer. People were travelling and holidaying everywhere. I understand that Europe relies a lot on the tourist dollar, but unfortunately now they are paying the price.
Sweden's approach to herd immunity has not worked as expected.
so it would be very foolish of any country in europe to allow US tourists in any time soon.
In Australia, we are not expecting international travel to begin until mid 2021 and that will be with countries in our travel bubble. I don't expect us going to Europe or the US until there is a vaccine.

My son lives in NYC, so I totally feel your pain KarenWoo as we had booked to visit him this July, and then I was hoping for December this year. but that is not happening.

I really don't know if you can call Sweden's approach a failure, compared to what other countries have done.
These are the European statistics;
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea

I agree that opening up for the summer holidays was a mistake. But even before that, Belgium had a pretty strict lockdown and still twice the number of covid deaths compared to Sweden, which has about the same number of inhabitants. The Netherlands was much less strict compared to France and Belgium, and did not do worse.

It will take a while before research will be able to pinpoint what went wrong where.

As in Sweden, Dutch statistics under-count deaths. The Dutch statistics office suggests we're at 11000 - 13000 dead, because people who died in care facilities often weren's counted. RIVM, Dutch CDC is continually correcting retro-actively. Just like Sweden does.

The difference is the government policy.

Not disputing that, Menachem, it's terrible whichever way you look at it. In Belgium they count every single suspected death as Covid. That's 11.625 so far, for a country with 11 million people.
So roughly the same number of casualties as in the Netherlands, but the Dutch have a population of 17 million.
From these ECDC numbers, the 14-day cumulative number of covid deaths per 100.000:
Belgium 10.5
France 5.1
The Netherlands 3.8
Sweden 0.3
Until recently, Belgium's government policy was much stricter than the Netherlands. There are heavy fines for even small infractions, masks have to be worn indoors everywhere including at highschools. Belgium has not dealt with this crisis any better than the Netherlands or Sweden, even accounting for underreporting of covid deaths.

Millie2112, I feel your pain, too. My daughter in France and her family were supposed to visit this Christmas, but that won't be happening. I had hoped we could go to France in April 2021, but now I highly doubt that will happen. They hope to come here in summer 2021 as they need to use travel vouchers by end of 2021. The last time we saw them was October 2019, exactly a year ago. My grandchildren are young, so they change a lot at their ages. So sad we can't see them. We do Facetime, but that is not the same.

""travel vouchers by end of 2021""

Always re-check the expiration of travel vouchers. My Delta vouchers first expired at the end of this year. Then Delta issued a new Covid policy - and automatically re-set the expiration date to the end of 2022.

Stu Dudle

Stu, thank you for your important advice. I will pass that on to my daughter. Who knows what 2021 will bring?