What really matters is people’s actual behaviour, as you pointed out. In the US people are cautious because they don’t trust their government to have it under control. In the Nordic countries and Germany people are cautious because they treat government advice more seriously than us Eastern Europeans treat actual legislation. The lack of a federal fiscal response also hurt. The poor states in the East can’t afford generous furlough schemes(not that the furlough scheme seems to have helped the UK, France and Spain that much); France, Spain and Italy are dealing with significant debt burdens. Various pushes were made to get people back out and working and off furglough during late summer early autumn. It worked(another finger curls on the monkeys paw)!
The European story is complicated and regional, similar to the US. You got Germany, the Nordics and the Baltics doing very well in terms of case counts and (as far as I know) without insane restrictions. Then you have Eastern bloc places doing increasingly poorly, but still ok for now. Then you have the Czechs(positive rate >25%!, adding the same number of cases per day as Italy(10 million Czechs vs 60 million Italians)) in 2-weeks-til-zombie-apocalypse mode. Then you have whatever is happening in France and Spain.
Czech Republic issues, at least, seem to come from the governing party downplaying the virus a lot before their October elections. They promised they wouldn’t reinstate a lockdown no matter what. 2 weeks later they’re in lockdown. They’re numbers went nuts right around when the campaign was picking up too. People maybe actually believed their politicians’ promises that things would be OK if they relaxed. Rookie mistake, czechs, rookie mistake.
Belgium has been in political anarchy for years, the government has very little authority over the population and is indecisive and weak to boot(for an overview https://www.politico.eu/article/how-belgium-failed-its-second-corona-test/). They flip flopped on restrictions, people weren’t given clear instructions from government or non-governmental experts. Netherlands aren’t as governmentally incompetent but their country literally overlaps Belgium and their government wasn’t super restrictive either. In fairness to both countries, they are the political(Brussels) and trade(Rotterdam and Antwerp) centers of Europe. They had travel bans in place, but there still would have been a huge amount of commercial traffic that was exempt.
Other places in Eastern Europe are still quite poor and can’t cushion shutdowns with generous leave, so the population kinda had to be let back to work, bars and restaurants and tourism had to be opened up. I’m not sure how big the conspiracy aspect is. In Romania(where I’m from) my parents’ group of friends(all in their late 50s early 60s) are averagely open to conspiratorial stuff(I think almost all adults that grew up under communism are like that) and they take the virus very seriously. But again, they’re all still working, not really doing WFH, but they are masking, isolating from vulnerable relatives and each other.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&country=ROU~AUT~BEL~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~IRL~ITA~LVA~LTU~MKD~MDA~NLD~NOR~POL~PRT~RUS~SRB~SVK~SVN~ESP~SWE~CHE~GBR~MCO~TUR®ion=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc is the best site for COVID European COVID graphs as far as I know. The UK has excellent breakdowns(including by age group): https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19roundup/2020-03-26
What really matters is people’s actual behaviour, as you pointed out. In the US people are cautious because they don’t trust their government to have it under control. In the Nordic countries and Germany people are cautious because they treat government advice more seriously than us Eastern Europeans treat actual legislation. The lack of a federal fiscal response also hurt. The poor states in the East can’t afford generous furlough schemes(not that the furlough scheme seems to have helped the UK, France and Spain that much); France, Spain and Italy are dealing with significant debt burdens. Various pushes were made to get people back out and working and off furglough during late summer early autumn. It worked(another finger curls on the monkeys paw)!
The European story is complicated and regional, similar to the US. You got Germany, the Nordics and the Baltics doing very well in terms of case counts and (as far as I know) without insane restrictions. Then you have Eastern bloc places doing increasingly poorly, but still ok for now. Then you have the Czechs(positive rate >25%!, adding the same number of cases per day as Italy(10 million Czechs vs 60 million Italians)) in 2-weeks-til-zombie-apocalypse mode. Then you have whatever is happening in France and Spain.
Czech Republic issues, at least, seem to come from the governing party downplaying the virus a lot before their October elections. They promised they wouldn’t reinstate a lockdown no matter what. 2 weeks later they’re in lockdown. They’re numbers went nuts right around when the campaign was picking up too. People maybe actually believed their politicians’ promises that things would be OK if they relaxed. Rookie mistake, czechs, rookie mistake.
Belgium has been in political anarchy for years, the government has very little authority over the population and is indecisive and weak to boot(for an overview https://www.politico.eu/article/how-belgium-failed-its-second-corona-test/). They flip flopped on restrictions, people weren’t given clear instructions from government or non-governmental experts. Netherlands aren’t as governmentally incompetent but their country literally overlaps Belgium and their government wasn’t super restrictive either. In fairness to both countries, they are the political(Brussels) and trade(Rotterdam and Antwerp) centers of Europe. They had travel bans in place, but there still would have been a huge amount of commercial traffic that was exempt.
Also on September 23rd Belgium eased Coronavirus restrictions(https://www.garda.com/crisis24/news-alerts/382596/belgium-authorities-ease-covid-19-restrictions-september-23-update-23), literally the next day their exponential spike begins(https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=~BEL®ion=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc). The easing seems to have had a gigantic impact on people’s behaviour: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/changes-visitors-covid?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=earliest..latest&country=~BEL®ion=World Before the easing park and outdoors visits were 70% over baseline. 1(!) week later they were 10% over baseline. To be fair I’m not 100% sure that I understand the mobility numbers, so maybe it’s just a weird data quirk, tho the drop in park time and the jump in cases overlap almost perfectly.
Greece is doing great but Cyprus is doing bad. A bit of a mystery as to why. Cyprus was maybe more aggressive in courting tourists? They famously had a COVID insurance scheme. Looking at mobility data, the Greeks just seem to have gone outside and never gone back inside :D probably a good idea, maybe hard to replicate for those of us not living in Elysium, sadly https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/changes-visitors-covid?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=earliest..latest&country=~GRC®ion=World
Other places in Eastern Europe are still quite poor and can’t cushion shutdowns with generous leave, so the population kinda had to be let back to work, bars and restaurants and tourism had to be opened up. I’m not sure how big the conspiracy aspect is. In Romania(where I’m from) my parents’ group of friends(all in their late 50s early 60s) are averagely open to conspiratorial stuff(I think almost all adults that grew up under communism are like that) and they take the virus very seriously. But again, they’re all still working, not really doing WFH, but they are masking, isolating from vulnerable relatives and each other.