29 October 2020: Belgian PM calls for unity to fight coronavirus

29 October 2020: Update on The Corona Pandemic – In an almost presidential video message Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo addressed the population yesterday evening, stressing the importance of unity in the fight against the coronavirus. He announced that the new measures that were announced by the Flemish regional government on Tuesday will become effective immediately instead of on Friday as announced by the right-wing populist Flemish Minister-President Jan Jambon who has been bending to economic pressures to keep our society open as long as possible. This statement came after Jambon received a lot of criticism for the fact that the rules would only take effect on Friday evening, and that several mayors of Flemish municipalities already announced that they did not want to wait to introduce the new rules. Are we finally going to see a unity in command in our country? Up to now this key principle of effective crisis management has been ignored in Belgium at the expense of a healthcare system that is about to collapse. Meanwhile, also in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced that the country will go back into lockdown as of Wednesday evening and Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany will go into a “light lockdown” as of Monday. Clearly, everybody with common sense starts realizing that the second wave of coronavirus infections in Europe is bigger and deadlier than the first one and that a tougher approach is necessary to ensure that our hospitals can continue to cope with the alarming situation. I have no image that can describe the severity of the situation we are confronted with, so I decided to continue to continue to post pictures of my series “finding beauty in the ugly and mondain” … Visserij, Ghent, Belgium.