‘Sector plans’ in which sectors such as catering, sports and culture indicate what they themselves think they will do against revival of the virus. A ‘Societal Impact Team’ led by Jolande Sap that should provide advice on top of the OMT during revival of the virus. And there’s still that stick behind the door: if things go completely wrong this autumn, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport can and will intervene again, with measures such as curtailing events and, if necessary, forced closure.
That is roughly the content of the long-awaited corona plan that Minister Ernst Kuipers presented on Monday. A plan that stands out mainly because of what it does not contain. For example, the ministry still does not answer the question, emphasized by society, when exactly how hard action should be taken against the virus. There is also a lack of a convincing answer to the question of what to do if the hospitals unexpectedly fill up again. In any case, Kuiper’s earlier idea for an army of ‘care reservists’ has been reduced in the new plan to: perhaps former healthcare workers should also help in the event of a crisis.
In defense of the minister: it is not easy for Kuipers. After all, the country has to prepare for a game whose rules are still completely unknown. For example, no one knows what kind of coronavirus will be circulating next autumn: a new scourge of humanity, just a kind of cold, or something in between. It is also unclear how protected we will be in the future, by vaccines and previous infections. At worst, the virus finds a new way to evade our defenses, at best only the most vulnerable people need to be vaccinated and most vaccinated people are adequately protected against at least serious disease.
Self-reliance as Achilles’ heel
However, that does not change what can safely be called the Achilles heel of the ministerial covid strategy. Heilig tells the ministry that he believes in the self-reliance of society. If the virus spreads again, the social sectors will take measures to prevent infections out of well-understood self-interest, Kuipers repeated to journalists on Monday. The middle class will nevertheless want to prevent staff from being sick at home, is the example that Kuipers always uses on this point.
But that strategy has two shortcomings. The idea of business is to seduce and please the customer, not to make life more difficult for him. Take a city center full of shops, or a street with nightlife: who will be the first to impose restrictions on its customers, with mouth caps, distance rules or QR codes at the door?
This is also apparent from the long letter to parliament that Kuipers sent on Monday. The middle class mainly asks for clarity when they have to take action, it says. In any case, the sectors do not seem to get much further on their own than: we want to properly ventilate our business. An important opening move in the fight against the virus, but what should happen after that remains uncertain: first the Kuipers sectors want to hear which measure is exactly useful and how much. The result has been a stalemate: The sector plans, which should have been completed this month, are now expected to be finalized in September, when the virus may have already started its fall rebound.
The vagaries of the virus
That touches on problem number two with Kuipers’ approach: the nature of epidemics themselves. Disease spreads in a way that goes against human intuition: exponentially, rather than at a predictable incremental pace. One moment nothing seems to be going on, the next moment the virus is suddenly everywhere and it is too late to do anything about it. It is this characteristic that has often led to corona measures in recent years before the country was well and truly on fire – much to the dissatisfaction of the affected sectors. How will that be possible in the future, if those same sectors in fact already have to act hard when nothing has happened yet?
For example, two and a half years after the coronavirus called sars-cov-2 first spread to Europe, we are still at the mercy of the virus. With luck it is not too bad and there will be little going on next autumn, with bad luck it will be disappointing and draconian measures will be needed again in the course of the winter. And in between these two extremes is a minister who does what his predecessors already did: keep the figures, start a vaccination campaign if necessary, and to relieve the care of patients, send them home with an oxygen bottle.
Who hoped for an ambitious battle plan that breathes the atmosphere of crisis and urgency – never again! – is simply at the wrong address in The Hague.