Coronavirus DK: EU border patrol – who’s safe and who’s not

The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the first set of European countries that Danes can travel to (DK) as of today, June 27. It consists of 25 countries, a large majority of the EU. Excluded are only Romania, Portugal, the UK, Ireland, Malta and Sweden. “Today’s relaxation of the travel advisory shows that both Denmark and most of Europe are in much better condition than we dared hope only a short time ago,” said Jeppe Kofod, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Frequent updates

The main criterion for allowing travel to a country is that the infection rate is under 20 per 100,000 inhabitants in the preceding week. The list will be updated every Thursday. If a country exceeds the limit while Danes are staying there, travelers are urged to return to Denmark and be tested for the coronavirus. Citizens of these countries may also travel to Denmark if they have reservations for at least six days. Certain regions of the countries may have significantly higher infections than the national average, and SSI, the agency responsible for preparedness against infectious diseases, will maintain a separate list of them.

Regional outbreaks 

This comes at a time when Europe has seen an increase in cases for the first time in the weeks since most of the countries began to relax their lockdown measures. About 20,000 new cases and 700 new deaths are being recorded daily. According to Dr. Hans Henri Kluge, European Regional Director of the WHO, “30 countries have seen an increase in new cumulative cases over the past two weeks. In 11 of these countries, accelerated transmission has led to very significant resurgence.” 

The reproduction rate in Germany (DK), for example, has recently risen from 1.06 to 1.79, and a large outbreak at a slaughterhouse in the Gütersloh region necessitated the resumption of strict lockdown measures. The WHO’s European Region, however, is a much larger area than is covered in Denmark’s travel advisory. It comprises 54 countries and extends to the Middle East and central Asia. Kluge expects the resurgence to subside during the summer but warns that the situation could worsen in the fall, when seasonal influenza and pneumonia return.

Yankee, stay home!

The EU is also preparing its list of countries where the pandemic is so widespread that their citizens will not be welcome when it reopens its external borders on July 1. Along with other disaster cases such as Brazil and Russia and several developing nations, the United States has attained the distinction of being considered too risky. The list is not final yet, but it appears that the EU is prepared to forego the substantial tourism and business travel from America in order to uphold its standard. The benchmark is the average number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants, which is also used for the Danish travel advisory. The figure for the EU as a whole now stands at 16. The level in the US is 107.

See Denmark first 

The Danish rejsepas (travel passport) was sold out (DK) on Friday morning. All 50,000 passes that went on sale three days before are gone, as many Danes have chosen to hold their summer vacation in Denmark this year and to use collective traffic. The card gives access to all train, bus, metro and light rail in Denmark for an 8-day period from July 27 to August 9.

Coronavirus in Denmark: First do no harm

Let’s look at a different aspect of the situation today. Denmark has done fairly well in managing the coronavirus epidemic. I don’t want to give the impression that everything is going perfectly smoothly, though. It has also made some mistakes in the choice and timing of its emergency measures. But part of its relative success may be attributable to avoiding certain mistakes, for things it has not done.

It could be instructive to consider some things that are not happening in Denmark:

• Bureaucratic delays in starting testing.

• Doctors prohibited from complaining about lack of protective equipment.

• Workers fired for complaining about lack of soap.

• Spring breakers holding coronavirus parties where 20 or 40 get infected.

• Churches holding services in defiance of stay-at-home orders.

• Crowding in subway systems.

• People crowding together to watch the arrival of a hospital ship to treat people who don’t observe social distancing.

• A governor who says that senior citizens can be sacrificed so that businesses can reopen.

• A ban on KN95 masks from China despite shortages.

• States banning abortions during the crisis.

• A boom in gun sales and the prepping and home bunker business.

• A popular news outlet claiming that the virus – no more harmful than the flu – is being used “to score cheap political points.”

• A head of state denying that the virus is a threat and claiming it will disappear “like a miracle”; falsely claiming that anyone who wants a test can get one and that a vaccine will be ready “relatively soon”; defending using an ethnic epithet for the virus despite warnings that it encourages hate crimes; etc. etc. etc. etc.

• Death threats being made against an expert who finally persuaded the head of state that the virus isn’t a hoax.

• And this incident, reported on April 2, not on April Fools Day: An engineer derailed a train and drove it toward US Navel Ship Mercy, a hospital ship that had docked in Los Angeles. He said he thought the ship had “an alternate purpose … related to a government takeover…. People don't know what's going on here. Now they will.”

The head of state’s predecessor got a lot of criticism for his pithy foreign policy slogan – “Don’t do stupid shit.” Maybe it’s not such a bad operating principle in a crisis. 

Immigration is always on the agenda

In Denmark, it’s called “cucumber time,” the silly season for trivial news in the summer when nothing important is happening. In the past two weeks, however, the media have been dominated by the macabre story of a sunken submarine and missing Swedish journalist. But the Danish MPs have in fact been at work on proposals for measures affecting refugees, immigration and integration. Here is a summary.

As I mentioned last week, in response to an increase in shootings in Copenhagen, the minister of justice introduced a package intended to combat gang crime and violence. The week afterward, the Municipality of Copenhagen announced a set of initiatives intended to do the same. They concentrate on improving the coordinated efforts of social workers and the police, and they include visits to the homes of young men vulnerable to recruitment, a program to help gang members leave gangs safely, and assistance finding jobs for ghetto residents.

Liars and beggars

The government announced a proposal for a ban on permanent residence permission for refugees who are caught lying about their circumstances in applications for asylum. This concerns mainly young people who claim to be under 18 in order to obtain preferential treatment, and the Immigration and Integration Ministry reports that three-quarters of the applicants subjected to an age test were judged to be over 18. This would be measure No. 65 in the government’s campaign to restrict immigration. Critics argue that uncertainties and misunderstandings can easily arise in the hearings when interpreters are used. The proposal wouldn’t rescind applicants’ rights to temporary asylum under international conventions.

In June, Parliament passed a bill that made begging a crime punishable by two weeks in jail over the protests of organizations for the homeless. This came after an increase in foreign indigents camping out in city parks and other public places. More recently, the Danish People’s Party, the country’s most vehement anti-immigration party, proposed placing notices in Romanian newspapers warning about the policy in order to prevent people from coming. The measure is reminiscent of the ads placed in Lebanese newspapers to dissuade refugees from coming to the country.

Burkas and Muslim schools

Another measure that the Danish People’s Party has proposed several times is a ban on burkas or full facial covering. The Conservative Party has supported the ban, and now the Liberal Party expects it to be adopted soon. The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that Belgium could implement such a prohibition, and the Norwegian government is also considering it. The small Liberal Alliance Party, which gives the right-wing coalition its very slim mandate, is against the ban, but the Social Democrats would consider a proposal.

In one of the proposals with the most wide-reaching implications, Mette Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democrats, called for the closure of Muslim private schools in which the majority of pupils are non-Danish. This came after reporting by the BT daily on a headmaster who posted anti-Semitic images on social media. Noting that these schools may also promote values in conflict with the principles of democracy and sexual equality, Frederiksen questioned whether they are helping or hindering integration. The proposal itself may be in conflict with the European Human Rights Convention.

The latest announcements came from the administration: plans to contribute to a program to protect religious minorities abroad, particularly Christian minorities in the Middle East and North Africa, and the addition of two names to the blacklist of foreign “hate preachers.”

Xenophobia, intolerance?

So, significant things are happening behind the cucumber dressing. These measures of course reflect the tendency across Europe towards nationalism and isolationism. They may seem overly stringent, politically incorrect, even anti-humanitarian or racist, and they damage Denmark’s progressive reputation. They test the limits of certain provisions in human rights conventions, and some are contested and even invalidated. Then the legislators will try to find another way around the problem. That’s the democratic process.

And that’s a more important factor than one’s opinion on a given issue. There is a real debate here. The minority government must negotiate and compromise in order to muster a majority in Parliament. Cabinet members, other government officials, interest groups and affected citizens actually hold discussions in which they are not simply talking past each other while grandstanding for their own constituencies. When the center-left Social Democrats endorse selected measures as well as propose their own, they pass with a large majority.

Whose democracy is under siege?

Compare this with the situation in the United States, where there is growing polarization and now violent conflicts between nativists and proponents of identity politics as witnessed in the Charlottesville debacle. Congress can’t do anything about it, the executive branch exacerbates it, the two branches cannot collaborate, and executive orders are overturned by the courts.

Denmark is in the Islamic State’s sights. The recent events in Spain and Finland could have taken place here. The current wave of violence in Copenhagen and nearby Malmö, Sweden, involves gangs with predominately minority members who live in an alienated, “parallel society.” Certain controls and precautions are realistic and necessary. The Danish campaign on immigration and integration is not based on tricks, mystification and demagoguery. It consists of mainly incremental measures that often have international precedents. Most important, they are implemented by a functioning democracy. That’s what’s sorely lacking now in the US.

Happiness watch resumed: It’s the little things

This blog began in early 2016 when Bernie Sanders argued in the Democratic Party’s primary campaign that the US should emulate the social policies of Denmark and other Nordic countries. The purpose was to make a more detailed comparison from the perspective of Denmark’s ranking as the happiest country in the world. Around the time it became apparent that Sanders was out of contention, I stopped posting, except for a couple of pieces around the election, partly because the issues seemed less consequential under the likely Clinton Redux administration, which would continue Obama’s centrist course.

The blog wasn’t partisan, although I thought Sanders the least evil of the three leading candidates if only because of his basic integrity. But it needn’t have stopped, because the issues remained relevant. Indeed, they have become more urgent under Trump and Republican rule because America’s social compact is threatened and the social fabric is unraveling in economic and ideological polarization.

So after several months of inactivity, the blog will now resume, with the same general objective as before: What can America gain from the lessons of Western European social democracy? The short answer is still yes, people would be better off if the US could adopt some aspects of this culture, not only its governmental policies. But it’s also important to understand the context of the differences, which sometimes explains why Scandinavian institutions and customs can’t simply be imported into the US.

Domestic civilities
These are small countries, for starters, and maybe it’s the small things that add up to happiness or life satisfaction. For example, you should always take off your shoes when you enter someone’s home, except on formal occasions. If you’re going to stick around a while, bring a pair of slippers. If that doesn’t make America kinder and gentler, at least it will be cleaner, and fewer will leave home with holes in their socks. After a meal, always say “Thanks for the food” to the host or cook. When you meet someone you have visited or socialized with, say “Thanks for last time,” and she responds “In the same way,” meaning “Right back atcha.” Just thank people for various things at every opportunity.

Do you still use a single large blanket on your double bed? You should each have your own down comforter. Consider how much sleep has been lost collectively from tugging on blankets that are slipping away. (This hasn’t been proved to reduce the divorce rate, though. Denmark’s is even higher than America’s, but that may be partly because single mothers can manage better financially here.)

Public decorum and small monuments
If you ever happen to be a pedestrian, don’t forget to stand and wait for red lights to turn even if there’s no car in sight, even at three in the morning after a huge snowstorm. Time is not money. Help inculcate respect for civil order by conforming to the pack at the intersection, and meditate on the costs and benefits of a strong belief in authority when a breakaway jaywalker tests the resolve of the law-abiding citizens.

And generally, cultivate an appreciation for things on a smaller, more modest scale. The number one tourist attraction in Denmark is the Little Mermaid statue sitting on a rock in Copenhagen Harbor beside a promenade. It derives of course from a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen and through the generations survives all the kitsch that Disney can heap on it. Hardly more than a meter high, surrounded by little besides a sausage vendor’s cart and Japanese shutterbugs, it vanishes in comparison to monuments like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

There’s no admission charge and no security guards, and in its humble, low-security setting it also provides a convenient, miniature forum for political debate by vandalism, most recently doused with red paint to protest whaling in the Faroe Islands. This multipurpose, hybrid creature certainly earns its keep, needing only occasional cleaning or re-attachment of its severed head.

These measures might not make headlines, but they cost nothing (almost nothing, with starter comforters from IKEA) and can be implemented immediately while you’re waiting for single-payer health insurance.

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Europeans’ puzzlement about Trump

The election of Donald Trump was as shocking and disheartening to most Europeans as it was to polite circles in the United States. In some ways it was even more so, because they know less about the America and have more trouble understanding how it could have happened.

The reactions in Denmark, which were probably representative of Europe, were perfectly predictable along party lines. Most politicians were generally understated in observing that the US remains an important partner in world affairs. Right-wing Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen was more cordial, expressing a desire to continue the two countries’ good relations. The Left was aghast and feared for the survival of human rights and, from a slightly longer perspective, the planet. They think Denmark should reconsider the close military alliance it has had with the US since Anders Fogh Rasmussen drank the WMD Kool-Aid in 2003.

Global policewoman 

But it was obvious across the entire spectrum that they had strongly preferred Clinton, as did around 95% of Danes, and found the alternative unthinkable. Danes and most other educated Europeans know Clinton mostly from her role as secretary of state in photo ops with the world’s so-called dignitaries. She was an internationalist; she was well-spoken and well-informed; and she was “tough-minded.” She was also associated with her husband’s tenure during the economic prosperity and international stability in the days before 9/11.

For Danes, Clinton’s most important attribute, given the aspersions Trump cast on NATO, was her credentials as a Cold Warrior and Putin demonizer. Danes often think I’m naïve about Putin when I say that it was the US that fomented a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, much of which had been part of Russia for more than 200 years, and that Russia could hardly be said to have “intervened” in Syria when it was the only major military force that the country had invited.

They say the only reason I don’t worry about Putin is that I didn’t live in a divided Europe during Soviet hegemony. Trump not only is threatening to pull out of NATO, which would give Putin carte blanche to invade the Baltics and push westward; he’s even spoken favorably of that megalomaniac dictator. So Europeans, especially in small, exposed countries, had their own understandable pragmatic interest in the United States’ continuing to defend them against whatever is left of the Russian menace under the vigilant leadership of Hillary, her neocon posse and the US defense industry lobby.

Deplorables may have grievances too 

On the other side of the coin, Europeans were incredulous about Trump’s support partly because they don’t know the real state of what used to be the American middle class. From the same mainstream media that trashed both Sanders and Trump, they heard that US unemployment is below 5%, inflation is below 2%, and economic growth is always starting to gain traction. They don’t know that almost 100 million working-age Americans are out of the labor force; real median wages have fallen for decades; inflation for actual consumers of food, health care services and college tuition is far above the official rate; middle-aged white people in the heartland are addicted to opioids and committing suicide in record numbers; infant mortality … etc. etc.

Europeans had confidence in Clinton because she represented the status quo. Sixty million American voters distrusted her because she represented the status quo. That’s a simplification of course. There were also the classified e-mails on her private server and the apparent abuse of her office for private gains. Her strange, complicated relation to Islam: refusing to identify it with terrorism, opening the immigration floodgates to Muslim refugees, accepting contributions from countries under sharia law, helping to precipitate another Islamic civil war in Libya. And then she alienated a big bloc of the electorate with that elitist deplorables remark.

Caveat, disclaimer and disavowal of liability
I should hasten to add that none of this is meant as an apology for any of Trump’s outlandish pronouncements and behavior. As is well known, most Europeans reject absolutely some of the positions of the American right that Trump has advocated such as relaxed gun control, capital punishment and restrictions on abortion. They also stand to lose from protectionist trade policies. In this brief summary, I have chosen to focus on the aspects of their views I think are most in need of clarification.

Janteloven: the great leveler

Earlier I alluded to a fairly well-known but somewhat counterintuitive explanation of Denmark’s top happiness ranking: low expectations. Danes aren’t the most cheerful and effusive nationality. They don’t rate highest on emotional well-being and positive affect. Their lives are relatively comfortable, manageable and well-regulated, and that’s reason in itself to be satisfied. But the life evaluation parameter reflects not not only people’s immediate emotional state and circumstances but also how they view their lives overall, their past and their future prospects.

Danes may not set their sights especially high, but things turn out all right after all and they can’t complain about their lot. This is one of the secrets of their well-being: Underpromise yourself good fortune and get it overdelivered. Perhaps things turned out fine because they didn’t set their sights so high. A simple recipe for equanimity?

A law against individualism

This attitude may owe something to a distinctive Scandinavian social principle that’s usually reviled for being tyrannical and spiteful: janteloven (the Law of Jante). The term comes from a 1933 novel by Aksel Sandemose. Jante is the fictional town where the story takes place, and it operates according to an ethos defined in ten blunt commandments. For example: “You should not believe you are anything special. . . . You should not believe you are better than we are. . . . You should not believe you’re good for anything. . . . You should not believe anyone cares about you.”

It is taken to represent the extremity of small-town conformism and resentment toward individual striving and success: provincial, stifling, anti-intellectual, self-satisfied. But it also reflects a general orientation toward collective existence that is more often found in smaller, homogeneous populations. The individual’s deference to group values can be sensed in some characteristic Danish expressions. For example, you insist on your right to do something by saying “Jeg vil have lov til …” (I want to be allowed to …). You object mildly to a pushy individual’s behavior by invoking considerations of “us others”.

Janteloven may partly explain why fewer Danes are dreamers with big ambitions. Why they tend to prefer secure jobs and stable familial and social relations instead of chasing high salaries, social prestige, large houses and cars. A certain humility may narrow their outlook, but it also makes them pragmatic. They’d rather settle for a reasonable standard of existence than take risks for more.

Low ceilings

Janteloven can thus be understood as the perfect opposite of the American dream – that no matter what station you’re born into, there are no limits to what you can achieve by dint of ambition and hard work. Danish has a phrase that some (happy) visitors and emigrants to the US use to describe their new surroundings – “high to the ceiling,” a more modest version of the English “the sky’s the limit.” Janteloven also contradicts the American positive-thinking industry and the self-esteem movement, which held that unconditional praise boosts initiative and performance (apparently a fallacy that sometimes caused well-intentioned programs for ghetto schoolchildren, for example, to backfire).

When you hear references to janteloven today, it is usually being disparaged by people who endeavor to excel in sports, entertainment, business and other areas. But it is also praised occasionally as a salutary constraint on arrogance and egotism, for example in the temperamental handball star Anja Andersen, who led the Danes to a gold medal in the Olympics and later, as a coach, often wore a t-shirt with the slogan “Fuck janteloven.” (Yes, “fuck” has become part of the Danish language, spelled the same as in English in the imperative form. Sometimes, when Andersen's hecklers in stands persisted, she ran down the court flashing them the finger.)

Humble origins

I think differences in janteloven’s influence can be discerned among various demographic segments. It is probably strongest among the older generation who grew up closer to the time Sandemose’s novel portrays – also a period of hardship and Occupation by the arch-villains of modern history. It is clearly more palpable in rural areas than urban ones, and that generation was much more rural than contemporary Denmark is. Half the population lived on farms until the 1950s. In my generation, which came of age in the early 1970s, relatively few attended gymnasium and university; most were still labeled “unbookish” by ninth grade and started an apprenticeship in a trade. Today Denmark’s peripheral arc is maligned as an economically stagnant “rotten banana” where no intelligent young adult would willingly stay.

Janteloven seems less pronounced among the subsequent generations. There are plenty of accomplished individuals in Denmark who defy it – scientists, athletes, designers, tech innovators, and recently a slew of Michelin chefs – a disproportionately large number among the international elite, it seems. Businesspeople are often ambitious, switching jobs frequently to climb the corporate ladder. Generous maternity leave and daycare programs give women greater opportunities to develop their careers. Astute teenagers make a good income endorsing fashion and personal care products on YouTube and Instagram.

Decline and mutation

It is not surprising to see less influence of janteloven in younger adults, who grew up exposed to American celebrity culture. With an increasing number going on to higher education and professional careers, the strivers weren’t stigmatized as before. The Danish school system puts much emphasis on oral performance. Many exams are oral, and even in gymnasium, students get separate grades for oral and written performance. I have often been impressed with Danes’ confidence and poise when giving presentations and impromptu talks and then sometimes afterward surprised that the same person’s written work is slipshod or incoherent in its details.

Research shows that a modicum of overconfidence is advantageous in encouraging initiative and performance. But consider their performance on the PISA tests, which make an international comparison of schoolchildren’s academic skills. In the 1990s, Denmark was shocked to see that, despite the highest education spending in the world, its scores had fallen to the average level, and they've hardly recovered since. But the most striking result was that Denmark had the largest discrepancy between students’ estimates of how well they had done and their actual performance. That is, they led the world in overconfidence or self-conceit – not exactly the hallmarks of janteloven.

And the millennials grew up not only in an urbanized Denmark, with more mobility, diversity and opportunities, but also digitally connected to the rest of the world. Although they may seem spoiled and narcissistic, they are contending with a new version of janteloven, the pressure to keep up appearances under the constant surveillance of social media, and are reporting stress, anxiety and depression. They're not the ones who are driving up the happiness score.

Affinity with socialism

Although janteloven’s influence has gradually waned over the past century, it still exists in Denmark. Danes may still manifest a skepticism about others’ big ambitions, but now it’s more likely to take the form of friendly teasing than browbeating or ostracism. It may still serve a useful function by moderating vanity, braggadocio and excessive competitiveness, but it may also sometimes go too far. There is certainly disapproval of those who bend the rules or exploit loopholes and weaknesses for personal gain, and in some circles it can extend to people who accumulate inordinate wealth by perfectly lawful, productive work.

That invites a simplistic summary in political terms. Can janteloven explain the Danes’ preference for the collective security of social democracy over less regulated market competition and the possibility of larger rewards? Is the marginal income tax rate of 56% the measure of its abiding authority? It’s tempting to equate janteloven with socialism generally. Even though Denmark has one of the lowest Gini coefficients in the world, the far left sounds the alarm at any uptick. Its campaigns to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to “us others” – such as in the marginal rate and inheritance tax – are known as the politics of envy. The perpetual debate over the size of the welfare state can easily be boiled down to a struggle between the conflicting interests of the individual and the crowd.

Humiliation, American style

If it were possible in the US, would Americans be better off with a dose of janteloven? At the moment, it's not necessary. It would be nice if Wall Street banksters and the rest of the new oligarchy were more susceptible to shame, but that’s wishful thinking. For ordinary Americans, it’s too late. Earlier it might have tempered their delusions of grandeur when they fell for the speculative bubble of the decade. But since the latest crisis, much of the former middle class has been demoted to service-sector jobs by robots, software, and offshoring; retirees earn no interest on their savings because of the Fed’s ZIRP; young college graduates are buried in debt; etc. etc.

These days, the bottom 80% don’t need their neighbors telling them they’re not special. The global economy and the paralysis or indifference of Washington have already made that clear. The popularity of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders testifies to their diminished expectations. For enterprising, diligent individuals, America still holds great opportunities. But despite janteloven, the conditions for upward mobility are generally better in Denmark than in the US.

That doesn't mean America needs more socialism, though, if it’s only temporizing bread and circuses on borrowed money. The problem isn’t unbridled capitalism; it’s a corrupt version suffering from corporate welfare, cronyism and cartels. These rent-seeking rackets have created a structural jantelov that's holding the underdogs down. It delivers its injunctions both overtly and subliminally. It exhorts them to mindless consumption as their ticket to status, for example, when they haven't saved for a trip to the emergency room, let alone unemployment or retirement. In the US, we don't tell individuals they're worthless; we tell them to dream while we surreptitiously confiscate their worth.