We've entered lockdown on 7 November with 2,555 daily coronavirus cases and with an average of 2,223 cases over 7 days. We had the longest quarantine in Europe, we are the only country - together with Cyprus - where you can leave your house by sending an SMS, and We are also the country with, by far, the highest and most severe fines for breaching restrictive measures.
Nevertheless, five months later, we are coming out of lockdown with 3,132 cases (March 27 data), with a 7-day average of 2,426 cases, 72 deaths per day and a positivity rate above 6%. We also welcome, with celebratory tones, the first German tourists in Chania, on the same day that we record the third consecutive record in intubated patients (735 on 27 March) and, according to the doctors of «Evangelismos», 129 people are on ventilators outside the ICU, waiting for a futile ICU bed.
All this, according to the Tsiodra committee, at least as Professor Vana Papaevangelou conveyed her assessments, contains elements of «stabilisation». According to the Prime Minister, they also probably prove that «the country, despite the difficulties, has done much better than other countries». «If Greece,» Kyriakos Mitsotakis said last Sunday in an interview with VIMA, «had the European average in terms of casualties per million inhabitants, today we would be mourning twice as many victims.”.
According to international mathematics, statistics and scientific data, either the numbers in Greece are... lacking, or the Tsiodra committee and Kyriakos Mitsotakis know data that no one else knows - neither the ECDC nor Bloomberg, for example.
As to whether Greece has lower death rates than other European countries, comparative data from the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) raise serious questions:
In Britain, for example, where vaccination is much more advanced, also on 27 March, there were 3,865 daily cases and 58 deaths.
In Germany, where the level of vaccination is lower than in Greece, the daily number of cases was 17,628 and the number of deaths was 87 on the same day. And the population of the country is almost eight times that of Greece.
In Portugal, which is related to Greece, 344 cases and 8 deaths were recorded on 27 March. In Belgium, there were 5 332 cases and 18 deaths, while in the Netherlands, with 8 798 cases, there were 29 deaths. In Spain also on 18 March (latest date with official data available), and with restaurants open and many shops open, there were 3,064 cases and 21 deaths.
Beyond the cases and their relation to mortality, the narrative of «one of the best countries in Europe» is not supported nor from Bloomberg's monthly survey of the pandemic response.
Greece is ranked 40th out of 53 countries, and 17th out of 20 European countries. In summary, it appears as one of the countries with the lowest resistance to the pandemic, in one month - in March - has dropped 20 places in the global coronavirus management ranking, and at European level the only three countries that are in lower positions are Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic.
That being said, it is interesting to provide any other, different data available to the government, the Ministry of Tourism and TUI. To justify, if anything, the «All you want is Greece» - the slogan of yet another state of mind Greek summer...
