generalspeaking

Coronavirus? Having a Blast!

"We've seen large numbers of people completely flouting the health regulations, seeming not to care at all about their own or their families' health, wanting to have large parties."
"It's hot, some people have drunk far too much, some people are just angry and aggressive and some are just plain violent."
London Police Chief Cressida Dick

Parisians dance in the street at Fête de la Musique, 21 June. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

All across Europe, from London to Portugal, tens of thousands of young people are no longer hunkered down in fear of contracting the novel coronavirus, much less listening to the advice of medical professionals and government cautions. It's party time for the young -- lonely and bursting with energy, wanting to party in an atmosphere of stillness and mood-stifling apprehension over a more open attitude inviting a second wave of infections and accompanying deaths from COVID-19.

The massive global lockdown is being relaxed,and with it goes the tension and fear, and a willingness to gamble on the alternatives that threaten the old and the infirm, not the young and hale bursting with excitement and yearning to return to pre-COVID days of blase contemporary spontaneity. Mass gatherings have suddenly erupted, with and without face masks, with and without distancing.

Music, dance, and plenty of company with all the carefree opportunities that accompany a relaxed attitude, leaving concerns to the minds of the vulnerable aged and the health and government authorities. Their frantic celebrations of life and luxuriant youth displaying itself in the full regalia of confidence in their indestructibility bring shudders to the health community in their nightmares of a second wave of infections and a follow-up lockdown.


Police have been summoned to do their duty, reason with the youth, and failing that use whatever influence they may have to persuade them to separate and disperse. The response has been not quite predictable, leading to clashes in London where crowds attacked police with bottles, setting themselves against patrol cars. Twenty-two police officers required medical attention.

Several parties taking place in London were dispersed overnight by police. Incidents of rape, of drug offences, and of stabbings at raves in several cities are being investigated.

It's summer, after all, and nothing can dampen the spirits of the young wanting to be out and about with their peers, released from the grim reality of isolating from the prospects of infection. A virus that threatens not the young but the health-and-immune-impaired, the elderly -- and what concern is that of theirs?

Germany and France are seeing their young exuberantly enjoying street parties, oblivious to the toll their nations have been suffering, because after all, it's summer and the days and nights call out for action-oriented fun in crowds of young, lithe and beautiful people, anxious to re-establish contact with one another, sick to death of grim foreboding, sentiments not their own by natural law.

Portugal's Atlantic beaches are crowded with sun-worshippers.Thousands sought out Portugal's cities of Porto and Braga on the weekend to party in the heat. "Join us on this magical journey in the forest" crooned a message on social media for a gathering on a hidden beach west of Lisbon. "Let's get together and share some loving, vibes and music", came the irresistible call to action.

At Hasenheide Park in Berlin hundreds gathered to dance into the night in recent weeks. "I think people are just longing to socially connect", commented D.J.Elias Dore in Berlin, of the thousands of young people who would under normal circumstances be dancing under the open skies at European summer festivals.

Spanish policemen ask people  sunbathing to leave the Barceloneta beach Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images

"Even if they don't usually get as ill, young people still transmit the virus", stated Dr.Celso Cunha, a virologist at the University of Lisbon, bemoaning that proper testing and tracing to prove whether contagion is happening will not be possible, given the thousands of anonymous attendees popping casually in and out of events.