Since I forgot to hit publish on this post 4 months ago, I’m updating the post to include some newer commentary about what is going on over here. It’s been a very interesting few months: the Dutch flattened the curve quickly thanks to a pretty quick response that was widely accepted and followed….However the tourists have been back for several weeks now and the numbers are clearly headed in the wrong direction (see below).
Not only are Dutch people tall, they are also very well organised AND 100% ok speaking English! The Gemeente of Amsterdam even has an English Language website regarding the COVID-19 Measures.
There is a nice Bloomberg Article from early June about the Intelligent Lockdown in The Netherlands. Here is part of it (I think it nicely captures the sentiment of the Dutch people):
…The Netherlands was opting for what Rutte termed an “intelligent lockdown.” In a nationally televised address, the first by a Dutch prime minister in more than four decades, he noted that restrictions have a price, even if they’re not immediately visible. “We will continue to search for the balance between needed measures and allowing ordinary life to continue as much as possible,” he said.
Rutte’s guiding principles—allowing people to go out but trusting them to practice safe distancing—asked a lot of his constituents. “The whole plan relied upon public support,” says Daan Roovers, a medical doctor, professor of philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and the “thinker of the fatherland” (an unofficial title bestowed by Philosopher magazine and the newspaper De Trouw). “When you impose a rule in the Netherlands, there will be a lot of resistance—we’re not that obedient,” she says. “So if you leave people a little room to maneuver for themselves, to think for themselves, you’ll gain more support and it will be more successful.”
This is grounded in Dutch history and—to the extent such a thing can be said to exist—the national character. Bas Heijne, a columnist for Amsterdam newspaper NRC who lives part-time in Paris, says France “is very much about procedures—the ornament, the ritual of bureaucracy.” In the Netherlands, by contrast, “the attitude toward the crisis was much more talking about people’s own responsibility—it must all come from the inside, not from rules.” Indeed, on March 12, Rutte said, “I want to call on everyone to keep an eye on one another. Help each other where possible.” Automated announcements on the Amsterdam Metro echo him and ask riders every few minutes (in Dutch and English) to keep a distance of 1.5 meters.
For the Dutch, sacrificing a measure of freedom to achieve a shared goal is a notion that goes back to the 11th century, when Netherlanders started cooperating to drain bogs and beat back the ocean to reclaim land that was later divided among the volunteers as farms. Nine out of 10 Dutch people said in March they were “willing to give up some of their individual freedoms to keep the coronavirus from spreading,” according to polling by Motivaction and the WIN/Gallup network.
Lots of interesting stuff there; I find it interesting that it was the first time a Dutch Prime minister gave a nationally televised address in more than 40 years.
Here is what I consider to be the best website for looking at COVID-19 related data.
