2 November 2020: Crowded shopping streets and illegal parties continue to shame Belgium

2 November 2020: Update on The Corona Pandemic – Despite that the virus continues to spread rapidly among the population across the whole country and just a day before the lockdown measures are due to come into force, a Shopping Sunday took place in Antwerp. Given the large number of shoppers on Saturday virologist, healthcare workers and everybody with common sense had high hopes that the event would be rained off or that people would simply stay away from the shopping streets. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the opposite. The city center of Antwerp was again extremely busy, and there were big queues outside retail outlets. Also, Police continued to be called out to close down illegal parties and gatherings. Incomprehensible! Belgium is not the only country that has gone into or is about to enter its second lockdown of the coronavirus crisis. Countries such as France are already in lockdown while England will go into lockdown from next Thursday. Our situation is much worse than the situation in Germany, France or England, nevertheless, a part of the Belgian population is unwilling to stick to the basic measures that have been put into place to curb the further spread of the virus and some politicians are shying away to drive compliance. This trail of grossly irresponsible behavior will, without a shed of a doubt cost lives. Meanwhile, we gave up on our multi-course family lunch on Christmas. Instead we are bracing for a dark and grey winter. Let’s hope that afterwards there will be many beautiful springs and summers to come. Today’s dark and grey picture was taken a couple of years ago in Damme – Damme, Belgium.