Only together can we get corona under control. For two years, this was the government’s most important corona message. We saw TV spots, posters and of course the prominent back wall at all the press conferences. Until the last press conference on 14 January: suddenly the motto had disappeared. A logical step. Because it remains true that we have to do it together. But getting the virus under control is no longer our common goal.
“After two years, we have entered a new phase of the pandemic,” Health Minister Ernst Kuipers opened his statement at the press conference: “Corona is not going away anymore. We have to learn to live with this virus.’ Bright. But how did we actually end up in this new phase?
At the moment, the media mainly focuses on the question of how much milder the omikron variant exactly is. Many people have already made up their minds on the street and in social media: this new variant would be ‘just the flu’. No wonder that support for all restrictions is crumbling so rapidly.
One problem: it’s not right. Yes, says the World Health Organization: this variant appears to be ‘less serious’ than the delta variant. But that makes the variant ‘not mild’. Even in this new variant, covid-19 remains a dangerous disease for many people. The lesser impact of the variant is also mainly seen in countries and regions with a high vaccination and booster degree, especially among vulnerable groups. It partly explains why the variant still causes an awful lot of deaths in many places in the world and why so many corona patients have never been hospitalized in the United States as now.
Hero
Initially, the story of the pandemic was simple: we were the victims, the heroes worked in healthcare, and the virus was the villain. As the cabinet choices came under increasing criticism, the cabinet continued to blame new groups for the ongoing measures. But in recent weeks we have seen a remarkable development: the omikron variant suddenly seems to grow into a hero. Because thanks to this variant, the end of the pandemic is finally in sight, right?
This is much more nuanced, says the WHO again. The fact that so many Europeans can build up natural immunity against the virus in the coming months after an infection without directly overloading healthcare is partly because vaccines protect against serious illness so well. And the fact that more and more countries are lifting their measures or even abolishing the corona pass is mainly because the vaccination rate in those countries is so high.
That story must also be told consistently, because this variant now gets a lot of ‘credit’ for the new situation. Even OMT chairman Jaap van Dissel forgets to mention the role of vaccines in interviews. You’d almost wonder why the whole booster campaign was so necessary in the first place.
This weekend, the GGD sounded the alarm to warn that the Netherlands is insufficiently prepared for a new pandemic. This mainly concerns care capacity, sentinel stations and a new crisis organisation. Frankly, I’m more concerned about whether the population is ready for it. A narrative in which a virus variant seems to be the hero is certainly not going to help. The implicit lesson for a next variant or pandemic: let’s wait together and keep our fingers crossed for a better variant, maybe we’ll be lucky.
Own behavior
If the last two years have taught us anything, it is that we ourselves do have a lot of influence on the spread of and protection against the virus. The current situation is not only improved by something that happens to us, but also by brilliant scientists and the influence of our own behavior. The fact that there are such large differences between the corona situation in European countries – even those where the measures are comparable – indicates the impact of our collective actions. That narrative is more accurate, but also much more motivating.
It is clear that there is room for improvement here. In the Netherlands, measures have been poorly observed for some time and if something does not motivate us to stick to certain basic rules for longer, it is the incorrect suggestion that the omikron variant is ‘just the flu’.
Yet that seems to be increasingly becoming the dominant narrative of this pandemic. On Tuesday, the cabinet would be wise to correct myths and misunderstandings and tell the whole story. Such a narrative not only determines the support for basic rules and policy, but also offers more hope and guidance for the future. Because the end of this pandemic has been predicted many times before.
Lars Duursma is a communication expert, director of Debatrix and podcaster at De Communicado’s.