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If anything was clear in the nearly 10-minute television message to citizens on Thursday afternoon, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was that confinement is their last option. Mr. Mitsotakis described it brilliantly, when he stated that the management of the pandemic is not a “pendulum” that swings from one extreme of confinement to the other extreme of complete relaxation. Somewhere in the middle, there is a point of balance. In other words, we have to learn to live with the virus for several more months, maybe even years, and in that sense, blocking is not the answer.
Mitsotakis’s decision to address a televised message to citizens after a long time came after the extreme literature of all previous days that a confinement is, in essence, ante portas. This literature was maintained, among others, by members of the Committee on Infectious Diseases, some of whom, according to certain information from Protagon, received recommendations on the way they are placed in the media, perhaps it is not accidental how the night of the Wednesday. (here) Nikos Sypsas, theoretically one of the most “pessimistic” of the committee. The Prime Minister, however, wanted to intervene personally, as he did in several critical moments of the first wave of the pandemic, to give his position, but also to close the discussion on a universal quarantine.
Mr. Mitsotakis made several arguments as to why a blockade would be ineffective at this stage. However, the arguments that have been debated for weeks in the closed-door meetings of Maximos had not been clearly presented to the public. Hence, he spoke of a “new surveillance”, without horizontal measures. And the dilemma presented by the Prime Minister may have been “Self-Protection or Quarantine”, but for him, it is clear that the option is self-protection. After all, as he explained, quarantine has multiple costs: from business closures, unemployment, declining public revenues and recession to social prejudice, as each horizontal restriction disproportionately affects the strongest and weakest: “the closed “Schools only bring closed minds,” he said.
In this sense, according to the logic of Mr. Mitsotakis, the way forward is specific interventions, when necessary, such as. It will be done by strengthening the bus fleet. Soon 100 KTEL buses will enter the depots, while by the end of the year another 100 KTEL buses will have entered and the supply process for 300 urban buses with leasing will have been completed.
However, there is another parameter that Mr. Mitsotakis did not mention, but which has been discussed many times at the Maximos Palace. If there was a lockdown now and the company reopened, who would guarantee that a new lockdown would not be needed in two months? So would society and the economy work with the logic of the accordion?
At the same time, the Prime Minister wanted to respond to another debate that is gathering momentum, namely the pressure on the National Health System. “Hospital structures are far from their limits,” stressed Mr. Mitsotakis, announcing the strengthening of ICUs available in the coming days (here).
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