Today the government’s limit on gatherings was raised (DK) from 50 to 100 people. That was according to an agreement made one month ago. The limit will be increased further to 200 people on August 8. Researchers think lifting the restriction is reasonable since the infection rate in the country has fallen very low, but they warn that the virus is still circulating and the great majority of people are vulnerable to it. They urge people to maintain social distancing and good hand hygiene. By mid-June the police had issued 836 fines for violating the limit.
Wait till next year
The gradual increase of the limit is not enough to save the Copenhagen Half Marathon (DK) this year, though. The arrangers decided that it would not be responsible to unleash 25,000 runners onto the streets of the capital as planned on September 13. They were annoyed that they had not received guidelines from the government on the conditions for holding the race. Almost half the participants are from abroad, and many do not know how they stand in relation to the current rules on travel and lodging, explain the arrangers, Sparta and Dansk Athletics. They considered postponing the event until later in the year, but the uncertainty would remain and the weather could be worse.
The Copenhagen Half received much attention last year, when it sold out for the first time and the world record was broken (DK). Kenyan Geoffrey Kamworor ran the distance in 58:01. “People in the running scene began to compare us with the Berlin Marathon, the London Marathon and the New York Marathon,” says Dorte Vibjerg, Sparta’s managing director. “And we want to preserve the brand that we have developed.” Earlier in the year, the DHL Relay Race, the world’s largest, with more than 200,000 participants, was also canceled. The CPH Half is scheduled to resume in 2021.
Bribe from the “world’s most dangerous man”
An American living in Denmark got a surprise in her mailbox – a letter with a check for $1,200 (DK) from Donald Trump. “It was confusing, it was incredible, and I was insulted,” said Amy Faircloth, an anthropologist who has lived here for 45 years. The payment was part of the $2 trillion US relief package. Some 160 million citizens are to receive up to $1,200 to help them survive the coronavirus pandemic financially. That includes $2.5 billion for American citizens who live abroad, since they are also liable for income tax in the US.
But the letter itself was disconcerting. It was presented in Trump’s “grandiloquent” style “as if it were his money that he was giving to me personally,” said Faircloth, and the signature “resembled a seismogram of a very bad earthquake.” In his notoriously crude and narcissistic fashion, Trump had insisted that his name appear on the check. But Faircloth believes that if he thinks he can buy votes that way, he is mistaken: “Actually, I think the problems in the US are that people don’t listen to one another. People are convinced that Donald Trump is a savior, and others think he’s the Devil himself.”
The check arrived just as the contents of the latest book about Trump, by Mary Trump, his niece and a clinical psychologist, are being disclosed. The book may offer the most detailed portrayal yet of Trump’s many pathological traits throughout his life.
Some people are getting impatient with the government’s “gradual and controlled” reopening. That has led to a reversal of the so-called “midnight rule” (DK) for large parties at hotels and restaurants. According to the government’s plan for the relaxation of pandemic restrictions, restaurants and bars were allowed to open but must close by midnight. The rationale was that if people keep drinking into the night, they will be less careful about observing social distancing and good hygiene. The rule was extended for the sake of consistency to cover private gatherings held at these locations and other rented premises for wedding receptions and other large parties.
Cinderella versus the Nanny State
The right-wing opposition parties, along with the Social Liberal Party, thought this was going too far. They called the rule an expression of a “nanny mentality” and said that during the summer, the high season for such gatherings, the parties would just migrate at midnight to private homes and continue in the yard. This faction constituted a parliamentary majority and threatened to overturn the rule, but the Social Democratic government acceded to their wishes. Now parties can continue through the night as long as the gatherings involve people who know one another and others are not allowed in, they sit down, and they observe social distancing.
When Justice Minister Nick Hækkerup was asked what this concession meant about how much the government has regulated things, he replied, “Although it resembles a small problem, it is a problem that has received much attention and therefore shall have this solution.”
European hordes clamoring at the gate
On Thursday, the EU Commission recommended that member states open their borders (DK) to other EU countries on June 15. Denmark’s plan is to keep its borders closed to all but a few countries until August 31. The EU cannot force individual countries to open their borders, but almost all the member states are planning to open their borders by June 15. The EU Commission also recommends that member states open the borders to countries outside the EU that have the pandemic under control as well as the EU countries.
The European Commissioner, Ylva Johansson, happens to be Swedish, and Sweden has been pressing Denmark to allow its citizens access to Denmark. Sweden has a much higher infection rate than Denmark and its other neighbors, Norway and Finland. “There are perhaps 20,000 infectious Swedes,” says Christian Wejse, a specialist in infectious diseases at Aarhus University, “and with open borders they could quickly start new cases here.”
Bureaucratic jungle
On Friday, the left-leaning daily Information published an editorial calling the government’s reopening policy a “farce” (DK). The government has been preoccupied with small distinctions in detailed rules about hotel stays, high school graduation celebrations, reunifications with partners abroad, and arbitrary closing times for restaurants. Freedoms that people had taken for granted have been passed out in small bit after political negotiations, and it has created a bureaucratic jungle of arbitrary, special laws. People have difficulty understanding them and will stop following them instead of focusing on the crucial factors of social distancing and washing their hands.
People can’t say they hadn’t been warned. The police waited a long time before beginning to issue fines to people who gather in groups of more than ten. Their instructions had been to break up the groups with “dialogue and instructions” (DK) and only to issue fines as a last resort if those methods didn’t work. Dialogue is always the preferred solution, they say. The groups usually did disperse, but sometimes they returned after the police had gone or others gathered later in the same area. In the past week, when warmer spring weather arrived, they issued only seven fines in the entire country. Almost everyone got off with a warning, while the healthcare authorities kept telling them that they risked losing the progress that the country had made in controlling with pandemic in the past month.
But now the cops have lost their patience. They say people have had time to learn the rules and now they will issue fines more readily. Saturday evening they issued fines to ten people who were playing a game on the beach. Except for a couple who escaped, each of them was fined DKK 2,500 (DK) (about $350), as the police were quick to tweet soon afterward. Sunday morning they issued the first fines (DK) to people loitering at Islands Brygge, the popular waterfront area in Copenhagen where a complete ban went into effect the evening before. One victim was a woman who was sitting on a bench (DK) by a playground with her seven-year-old daughter and her daughter’s friend.
$350 for sitting with two seven-year-olds
In an interview afterward, the woman said she had been shocked that the police gave her a fine without a waning. There was no one else in the playground and no sign at the entrance saying that they couldn’t be there. She lived in the neighborhood and had been concerned herself about the large crowds gathering there. She had been so surprised that she hadn’t even asked the police the amount. “Oh no, no, no!” she said, when the reporter told her. When the police were asked whether the fine wasn’t excessive for a woman and two small children, a representative said that it might seem unfair to an individual, but there were signs all over the Islands Brygge neighborhood and the situation should be seen from a wider perspective.
Sunday evening 11 young men and boys (DK) aged 16 to 21 who were gathered near the harbor in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city, were also issued fines. The police sent a tweet soon afterward as if they were eager to publicize the fact that they were no longer issuing warnings and allowing exceptions. The young people knew they weren’t supposed to be standing together, said the police shift captain, because they dispersed as soon as they saw us. At a club in the Northwest district (DK) in Copenhagen, 34 people were fined for gathering without any creditable purpose. The prohibition against groups applies to both public and private locations, said the police. Fines were issued to all 34 individuals, bringing the total amount to DKK 85,000 (more than $12,000). If some of them want to appeal, said the police, it will be up to the courts to decide their fate.
Collateral damage
The crackdown is bad news for Bryggens Spisehus (DK), a popular café at Islands Brygge. Adem Asci, the proprietor, says that before the ban on the area he had started to reestablish his takeout business. Customers generally kept a distance from one another when they stood in line and took their food to the nearby benches, he said. That is, until Thursday and Friday, when large crowds started congregating there. Now Islands Brygge is empty. Asci says that if the police had acted more resolutely earlier, it might not have been necessary to issue a total ban on the neighborhood.
The warnings didn’t work. In a press conference yesterday, Copenhagen’s Police Chief Anne Tønnes said the police were issuing a ban on gatherings in the waterfront lawns (DK) in the Islands Brygge neighborhood in Copenhagen. She reported that around 200 young people partied in the area the night before in an “inappropriate” manner despite clear warnings not to do so. Now they will be given fines of DKK 2,500 (about $350) immediately and will be subject to higher penalties for repeated offenses. The ban extends until May 1. It does not prohibit people from walking through the area. This is the second case in which the police have issued a ban on gatherings in a particular area. The other applies to a shopping center on the small island of Romø.
A loud sitting ovation
People are finding ways of returning to normal activities again under new conditions. Musicians and other performers have been sidelined by the ban on large gatherings. Friday evening the singer Mads Langer held a concert at a drive-in movie theater (DK) outside Aarhus. The concert was arranged at short notice, with tickets for 500 cars sold out in a week. The sound was transmitted to cars on an FM radio frequency, and the attendees seemed to enjoy the music and the new experience. They honked their horns to applaud, ran their windshield wipers, and rocked the cars. The event took place at what they call P-scene (DK) at Tangkrogen by Aarhus Bay, and several other performances are scheduled in the coming weeks.
Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup says that it is a healthy sign that people are finding creative ways to hold cultural events. They are using drive-in theaters for experiences that otherwise wouldn’t be possible under the lockdown – concerts, church services, film and soccer transmissions. Nevertheless, the Justice Ministry wants to monitor such events so see that they take place under proper conditions. It has therefore announced that event arrangers must obtain advance permission (DK) from the police. The requirement extends through the summer.
Necessity is the mother
The Skyland Beach music festival (DK), which had been scheduled for two weeks in July, was canceled because of the lockdown. Three siblings whose parents have run camping grounds at Skyland and a friend are now working on a plan B that they hope the authorities will approve. They want to hold the event at the camping grounds with strict hygienic rules and facilities.
Camping grounds have been given permission to open if they maintain a distance between guests. The large camping grounds at Skyland can be divided up into areas with 500 people each, and the Pedersen siblings hope gatherings of that size will be allowed again by the time the festival will be held. They propose issuing armbands according to the area where participants are staying, and after the music stops in the evening, when the guests traditionally begin to mingle, they will be allowed to hug, kiss and so on only with those with the same color armband. That’s the proposal anyway. Security staff will be on hand to make sure that people follow the rules. If the Pedersens don’t get approval, they will resort to plan C, operating ordinary family camping grounds.
