{"id":223637,"date":"2020-12-21T08:52:39","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T08:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=223637"},"modified":"2020-12-23T08:54:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T08:54:40","slug":"covid-germany-begins-hard-lockdown-ahead-of-christmas-as-paris-streets-empty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=223637","title":{"rendered":"Covid: Germany begins hard lockdown ahead of Christmas, as Paris streets empty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction \u2013 Dec 21, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Britain isn\u2019t the only country in Europe to tighten restrictions on movement and activity in the run-up to Christmas.<\/p>\n

France has introduced what amounts to a night curfew while the Netherlands is in the middle of a strict five-week lockdown. Meanwhile Germany has imposed new restrictions, which will allow only essential businesses to remain open.<\/p>\n

The reasons given for tightening controls vary. Angela Merkel cited the need to contain a rising number of Covid cases<\/a>. While in Britain the need to control a more infectious variant of coronavirus was cited as the reason<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Different reasons but the end result was the same and all clampdowns came within a week. Is it a coincidence that this is all happening over the Christmas holiday?<\/p>\n

Moreover, this isn’t just happening in Europe. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Canada, Ontario is about to launch a province-wide lockdown<\/a> beginning on Christmas Eve, Dec 24.<\/p>\n

As elsewhere on the planet, Canadians are being ordered to put their jobs, businesses and livelihoods on the line to contain a disease that in reality is only marginally more deadly than the common cold and flu.<\/p>\n

To contain a \u201chealth threat\u201d that is largely a creation of the government and media we are being asked to accept new procedures \u2013 mandatory masks, social distancing, travel bans \u2013 that could easily morph into full-on totalitarianism.<\/p>\n

Covid: Germany begins hard lockdown ahead of Christmas, as Paris streets empty<\/h1>\n

Joe Middleton — The Independent Dec 16, 2020<\/h2>\n

Germany has shut schools and non-essential businesses in a strict lockdown to try and bring under control soaring coronavirus cases.<\/p>\n

The fresh restrictions will be in place until January 10, but there will be a slight easing of measures over Christmas allowing one household to have up to four family members.<\/p>\n

The country reported 952 deaths, the highest increase yet, along with 27,728 new cases on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Fears of the pandemic spiralling out of control drew swift action from Chancellor Angela Merkel and 16 state governors who announced the tough new restrictions on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Ms Merkel told lawmakers on Tuesday she was worried by the upward trend in coronavirus infections and warned them that January and February would be very tough months.<\/p>\n

Other European countries have also tightened restrictions after a rise in cases, with England in a strict tier system, France<\/a> introducing a night-time curfew<\/a> and the Netherlands currently in a five week lockdown.<\/p>\n

Germany was more successful than many European countries in keeping the coronavirus under control in the first wave in the spring but the situation looks very different now<\/p>\n

Continues \u2026 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain is not alone in re imposing strict lockdowns in the run-up to Christmas. Days before Boris Johnson unveiled stricter lockdowns rules, Germany and France had acted, although the reasons they gave were different. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":223639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223638,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223637\/revisions\/223638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/223639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}