a report from our man in Llubljana
I mean, the second wave numbers are atrocious and have not appreciably gone down in 2 months. They hover around the 1,500 to 2,000 a day mark, which when you consider it has a population of 2 million (what's that, the same as the Leeds metropolitan area?), it's astounding. And these numbers are not going down despite the fact that we are approaching our third month of total lockdown.
Although they opened some non-essential shops this week, and plan to open more tomorrow, they will be closed very soon again, likely until the end of January. I've not been to a pub, restaurant or bookshop since mid-October, and a 9 pm curfew has been in place for nearly 8 weeks now. The buses and trains began running on Tuesday, the first time in 2 months.
Reasons? Many. The withdrawal of financial support/furlough money has meant that people are going to infected workplaces, and going to work infected themselves, because they cannot afford to do otherwise. The furlough scheme was never as comprehensive or generous as even the UK scheme, with many, many people excluded. If I look out my window, there are just as many cars on the roads as there would be normally, or perhaps 10% less. They're not going out or to see friends, they're going to work.
It took the government a long time to admit this. When the numbers kept rising after the first 2 weeks of this lockdown, they blamed illicit parties and gatherings, the weekly anti-government bicycle protests and, quite gloriously, St Martin's Day (11 November), which is the day new wine becomes 'wine' and is usually accompanied by feed-ups and piss-ups across the country. Well, the protests haven't gone on since then, no one's out and about, parties have (I believe) dwindled, and the numbers are still up. It's work.
Mask compliance here is almost total, inside and out, although you do have the usual weirdos and misfits. But it's also and mostly this government. Thankfully, the fucking Guardian appears to have stopped referring to Janez Janša as centre-right. He's a far-right anti-democratic strongman, a real cunt, fully as nasty as Orban and Bolsonaro, but with added obvious head problems. He's used the pandemic for other purposes, basically: to change environmental legislation so that many NGOs are now banned from taking part in environmental assessment procedures (clear breach of EU law), strengthen the southern border (because, you know, it's immigrants that carry the virus), argue for the return of national service, get rid of the head of the army, the police, the police anti-corruption unit and the head of the national broadcaster (all of whom fucking hate him), threaten to put the army on the streets.
Why does this matter, beyond the obvious? Because he's basically not addressed Covid for 2 months, the minutes of the cabinet and committee meetings barely mention it, he's closed the country down, stopped it going out after 9 pm and that's his cover. By the way, the corruption in PPE procurement is fully as eye-watering as it is in the UK. I think Slovenia now has enough masks to last 200 years or something, all sourced through a PO Box number set up about 9 months ago.
They used to have a system of quarantine orders. So you'd get one of these and you'd be entitled to some cash. It's not that there was a conscious effort to get rid of them. It's just that they stopped being issued because the government's focus is elsewhere. I mean, negligence beyond belief. I say that Slovenia is almost totally mask-compliant and it is. But I don't know what goes on behind closed doors, really. Whether people are still gathering. I know people who have, don't know whether they still do. But the nature of this government, their appalling messaging, and their clear attacks (really fucking foul-mouthed and boorish) on civil society has meant that a lot of people on the left, including a lot of mates, just do not give a shit. Their rebellion against Janša has become a rebellion against Covid and, sadly, there are some who've moved into whacko territory.
Tl;dr Fascism
