Europe's Christmas dilemma: risk empty chairs next year?

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Sun, 2020-11-29 18:09 — mike kraft

Europe's Christmas dilemma: risk empty chairs next year? BRUSSELS (AP) — Please leave a chair empty at this year's family Christmas dinner as a precaution, or face the possibility of having that chair empty forever. That's the stark dilemma... AP NEWS

BRUSSELS (AP) — Please leave a chair empty at this year’s family Christmas dinner as a precaution, or face the possibility of having that chair empty forever.

That’s the stark dilemma Belgium’s prime minister has set to urge smaller festive family gatherings, as Europeans battle with containing the surging COVID-19 pandemic over the holiday season.

Alexander De Croo argued that the country’s long-running, costly efforts should not be thrown away for the sake of a few warm and fuzzy hours exchanging gifts under the Christmas tree. “I would not want the progress of the past four weeks to be wasted because of four days,” he told legislators this week. ..

Europe’s nations are struggling to reconcile cold medical advice with a tradition that calls for big gatherings in often poorly ventilated rooms, where people chat, shout and sing together — providing an ideal conduit for a virus that has killed over 350,000 people in the continent so far. These weeks it is the No. 1 cause of death in the European Union.

Britain, with the continent’s highest death rate at 57,031 yet a Christmas tradition unlike few others, could not resist the temptation of relaxation.

People are currently barred from visiting other households in much of the U.K and there are travel limits to high-infection areas.

Although the European Union has no direct say in national Christmas restrictions, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, a former doctor, urged caution until vaccines become widely available.

“We must learn from the summer and not repeat the same mistakes,” she said. “Relaxing too fast and too much risks a third wave after Christmas.”

But even in her native Germany, led by the ultra-careful Angela Merkel, social considerations will prevail: A current restriction that limits private gatherings to five people from up to two households, not including children, will be allowed to double to 10 people over Christmas. ...

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