European countries mandate medical-grade masks over homemade cloth face coverings
By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN
Updated 1802 GMT (0202 HKT) January 22, 2021
German Chancellor Angela Merkel puts on her face mask after giving a press briefing on the Covid-19 situation on Thursday.
(CNN)Confronting new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus and a winter spike in infections, a number of European countries are beginning to make medical-grade face masks mandatory in the hope that they can slow the spread of the disease.
The French government has now mandated that citizens wear single-use surgical FFP1 masks, more protective FFP2 filtering facepiece respirators or fabric masks which meet the same "Category 1" specifications -- blocking more than 90% of particles -- in all public places. In layman's terms, homemade masks will no longer cut it.
It follows a decision by the German government on Tuesday requiring all people to wear either FFP1 or FFP2 masks while on public transport, in workplaces and in shops. The move came after the German state of Bavaria introduced an even more stringent measure: Enforcing surgical grade N95 respirators, which filter 95% of air particles, in stores and on public transport.
Austria will introduce its own FFP2 mandate on public transport and in shops from January 25.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel cited the spread of new coronavirus variants, which were first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, as the reason for stricter requirements. "I urge people to take this seriously. Otherwise it is difficult to prevent a third wave," Merkel told journalists in Berlin on Thursday, adding that a video summit of European Union leaders would be focused squarely on ways to counter the spread of variants on the continent.
************
Meanwhile in Belarus....
spiked-online.com
Belarus: the land Covid forgot
Daniel Hardaker
7-9 minutes
Belarus, the spotlessly clean, neo-classical avenues of Minsk in particular, is in the grip of mass unrest. Balaclava-clad snatch-squads roam the streets in unmarked vans. Twitchy 18-year-old army conscripts, nervously clutching rusting AK74s, stand across from defiant and jubilant protesters. And the white-red-white tricolour of the opposition to President Lukashenko is hung from balconies and strung across tower-block windows, while a cry of ‘Viva Belarus’ can send a bar or restaurant into rapture.
These are crucial and uneasy times in Belarus, and it is important not to downplay their significance. However, my state of mind while witnessing all this — and, I wager, that of most lockdown-sceptical Western visitors — is one chiefly of relief. Civil unrest is not unprecedented. The state of exception prevailing in the West is.
Belarus has not adopted any of the Covid measures embraced by the Western political bubble. There is nothing of the West’s panic, induced as it is by the rolling death tolls, hospital footage, campaigning scientists, and subsequently nodded through in a daze by parliamentary and legal power-checkers neglecting their responsibilities. Belarus is of course in crisis, but it is a different kind of crisis, one that has the effect of a turn towards life, not away from it.
Despite Lukashenko’s opponents wanting an end to his 30-year reign and arbitrary decrees, there is a small but significant sense of mutual understanding between Lukashenko and the opposition regarding Covid, even if it is not often explicitly stated. When Lukashenko called Covid ‘yet another psychosis’, and declared ‘I’ve gone through many situations of psychosis together with you, and we know what the results were’, he echoed the sentiment of many in the former Eastern Bloc, particularly in what used to be East Germany, who have lived through periods of state-managed fear before.
‘A broken clock is right twice a day, I think you say in English’, a programmer in his early 20s recalls with his arm around me. It is the early hours of the morning and we are both inebriated. The bar is in the Oktyabrskaya district of Minsk. It comprises a collection of art spaces, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, with a few state-owned industrial plants – complete with propaganda banners and Lenin busts – dotted throughout.
The clubs are open until 7 or 8am, and the after-parties go on longer. Everyone wants to show you their photography, their music, their Instagram account, but there is also a lack of ego, virtue signalling and social-climbing politics here. These hipsters will segue into Belarus’ milk-production statistics, their experience of mandatory work placements at the tractor factory, or what historical ties to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth mean for post-Lukashenko relations with Russia.
It is not only young people, either. Families and the elderly are visible in cafes, restaurants, churches, shops, markets and on public transport. A few wear masks, but there is no requirement, and no glares should you enter an enclosed space without one.
The biggest respite, though, is the total lack of the idea that proximity to other human beings brings forth mortal danger. No side-stepping on the pavement, no comments about social distancing, and no qualms about a little personal-space invasion on the packed metro.
A day trip into the provinces ends in a small cafe-bar, while I wait for the train back to Minsk. My pidgin Russian gives away the fact I am definitely not a local. An Englishman in Babruysk is an occasion, declares the waitress and, between the four or five punters and me, much vodka is drunk, stories exchanged and plates of draniki pancakes consumed. Hours pass without a mention of the virus. I stumble on to the train just in time, with ‘a gift from Belarus’: an electric cigarette lighter, a kind of USB version of what used to be found in cars. A local had insisted I take it home.
No section of Belarusian society appears preoccupied with Covid. There are some differences of opinion about what constitutes taking precautions, but it is clear to everyone that this is not the plague, and it does not require anywhere near the level of reaction seen elsewhere.
I am sad to be leaving. I do not want to go back to the land of chin-warming masks, arbitrary business closures and avoidable cancer deaths. Hope was generated, however, by the surprise that the Covid measure-induced neuroses, like the wariness of standing too close to others, hesitating to offer a handshake, or the pressure to cover the face and nose, disappeared within a few days of arriving. The fear of these things becoming permanent has retreated a little.
I pass the British Embassy on the way to the airport and see a sign posted to the door. It reads that the embassy will be closed until further notice, with all staff working from home. They are attempting their own private lockdown. It reminds me of those North Korean labour camps in Siberia that bring the whole propaganda apparatus from the homeland with them. A testament to the pointlessness and madness of the whole affair.
By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN
Updated 1802 GMT (0202 HKT) January 22, 2021
German Chancellor Angela Merkel puts on her face mask after giving a press briefing on the Covid-19 situation on Thursday.
(CNN)Confronting new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus and a winter spike in infections, a number of European countries are beginning to make medical-grade face masks mandatory in the hope that they can slow the spread of the disease.
The French government has now mandated that citizens wear single-use surgical FFP1 masks, more protective FFP2 filtering facepiece respirators or fabric masks which meet the same "Category 1" specifications -- blocking more than 90% of particles -- in all public places. In layman's terms, homemade masks will no longer cut it.
It follows a decision by the German government on Tuesday requiring all people to wear either FFP1 or FFP2 masks while on public transport, in workplaces and in shops. The move came after the German state of Bavaria introduced an even more stringent measure: Enforcing surgical grade N95 respirators, which filter 95% of air particles, in stores and on public transport.
Austria will introduce its own FFP2 mandate on public transport and in shops from January 25.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel cited the spread of new coronavirus variants, which were first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, as the reason for stricter requirements. "I urge people to take this seriously. Otherwise it is difficult to prevent a third wave," Merkel told journalists in Berlin on Thursday, adding that a video summit of European Union leaders would be focused squarely on ways to counter the spread of variants on the continent.
************
Meanwhile in Belarus....
spiked-online.com
Belarus: the land Covid forgot
Daniel Hardaker
7-9 minutes
Belarus, the spotlessly clean, neo-classical avenues of Minsk in particular, is in the grip of mass unrest. Balaclava-clad snatch-squads roam the streets in unmarked vans. Twitchy 18-year-old army conscripts, nervously clutching rusting AK74s, stand across from defiant and jubilant protesters. And the white-red-white tricolour of the opposition to President Lukashenko is hung from balconies and strung across tower-block windows, while a cry of ‘Viva Belarus’ can send a bar or restaurant into rapture.
These are crucial and uneasy times in Belarus, and it is important not to downplay their significance. However, my state of mind while witnessing all this — and, I wager, that of most lockdown-sceptical Western visitors — is one chiefly of relief. Civil unrest is not unprecedented. The state of exception prevailing in the West is.
Belarus has not adopted any of the Covid measures embraced by the Western political bubble. There is nothing of the West’s panic, induced as it is by the rolling death tolls, hospital footage, campaigning scientists, and subsequently nodded through in a daze by parliamentary and legal power-checkers neglecting their responsibilities. Belarus is of course in crisis, but it is a different kind of crisis, one that has the effect of a turn towards life, not away from it.
Despite Lukashenko’s opponents wanting an end to his 30-year reign and arbitrary decrees, there is a small but significant sense of mutual understanding between Lukashenko and the opposition regarding Covid, even if it is not often explicitly stated. When Lukashenko called Covid ‘yet another psychosis’, and declared ‘I’ve gone through many situations of psychosis together with you, and we know what the results were’, he echoed the sentiment of many in the former Eastern Bloc, particularly in what used to be East Germany, who have lived through periods of state-managed fear before.
‘A broken clock is right twice a day, I think you say in English’, a programmer in his early 20s recalls with his arm around me. It is the early hours of the morning and we are both inebriated. The bar is in the Oktyabrskaya district of Minsk. It comprises a collection of art spaces, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, with a few state-owned industrial plants – complete with propaganda banners and Lenin busts – dotted throughout.
The clubs are open until 7 or 8am, and the after-parties go on longer. Everyone wants to show you their photography, their music, their Instagram account, but there is also a lack of ego, virtue signalling and social-climbing politics here. These hipsters will segue into Belarus’ milk-production statistics, their experience of mandatory work placements at the tractor factory, or what historical ties to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth mean for post-Lukashenko relations with Russia.
It is not only young people, either. Families and the elderly are visible in cafes, restaurants, churches, shops, markets and on public transport. A few wear masks, but there is no requirement, and no glares should you enter an enclosed space without one.
The biggest respite, though, is the total lack of the idea that proximity to other human beings brings forth mortal danger. No side-stepping on the pavement, no comments about social distancing, and no qualms about a little personal-space invasion on the packed metro.
A day trip into the provinces ends in a small cafe-bar, while I wait for the train back to Minsk. My pidgin Russian gives away the fact I am definitely not a local. An Englishman in Babruysk is an occasion, declares the waitress and, between the four or five punters and me, much vodka is drunk, stories exchanged and plates of draniki pancakes consumed. Hours pass without a mention of the virus. I stumble on to the train just in time, with ‘a gift from Belarus’: an electric cigarette lighter, a kind of USB version of what used to be found in cars. A local had insisted I take it home.
No section of Belarusian society appears preoccupied with Covid. There are some differences of opinion about what constitutes taking precautions, but it is clear to everyone that this is not the plague, and it does not require anywhere near the level of reaction seen elsewhere.
I am sad to be leaving. I do not want to go back to the land of chin-warming masks, arbitrary business closures and avoidable cancer deaths. Hope was generated, however, by the surprise that the Covid measure-induced neuroses, like the wariness of standing too close to others, hesitating to offer a handshake, or the pressure to cover the face and nose, disappeared within a few days of arriving. The fear of these things becoming permanent has retreated a little.
I pass the British Embassy on the way to the airport and see a sign posted to the door. It reads that the embassy will be closed until further notice, with all staff working from home. They are attempting their own private lockdown. It reminds me of those North Korean labour camps in Siberia that bring the whole propaganda apparatus from the homeland with them. A testament to the pointlessness and madness of the whole affair.
Kyle Becker
