Rabobank has conducted its annual general welfare survey, and it revealed that Dutch people are less happy this year.

The survey from Rabobank asks people to assess their income and health, but also to share their opinion on the environment, housing, safety and social contacts, reports NOS.

Given the current coronavirus crisis, things have gotten worse for the Dutch (compared to last year’s survey) in three different areas: social life, housing and happiness. The feeling of happiness decreased the most out of all three. The survey showed that 29% of people felt less happy, compared to 23% who reported being happier. According to the researchers, this is a significant deterioration.

So why are the Dutchies down in the mouth this year?

For obvious reasons, social life has also taken a strong hit this year, due to the quarantine and closing of venues, which has meant less contact with friends and colleagues.

More people have also become increasingly dissatisfied with their housing situation: however, this trend was developing from before the crisis. Researchers believe that the situation only got worse with working at home, as well as children being unable to go to school.

Overall, the general prosperity of the country has not been affected, as most people indicated they have sufficient income.

The long-term impacts of the coronavirus crisis are still to come

The researchers involved in the survey have called on politicians to focus not only on public health and the economy but on other aspects of prosperity as well. “The first cracks are already visible. The fact that the effect of the corona crisis on the overall broad prosperity is still relatively small at the moment does not mean that the impact of the corona crisis cannot be even greater in the future.”

The Dutch are notorious for always coming in on top of happiness surveys– perhaps down to the Dutch mindset. However, after the last few months, it would be quite strange if the Dutch were still as content in life as they are when the world isn’t experiencing a global pandemic.

How has the crisis affected your wellbeing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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According to Leiden lecturer Wim Voermans, it is not possible to legally implement mandatory face masks, as it is against the constitution.

Today, certain municipalities expressed in the Security Council today that they would like to conduct experiments to see how to limit the virus, such as making face masks mandatory in busy areas.

However, Wim Voermans told RTL Nieuws that it’s simply not possible to do that. The Constitution forbids such measures, as he explained in state council back in May. “You cannot limit fundamental rights such as Article 10 – the right to respect for privacy – and Article 11 – the right to inviolability of the body – through an emergency ordinance. You can only do that through a parliamentary law.”

How come masks are allowed in public transport then? The reason is due to the Passenger Transport Act. Among other things, it requires that passengers must follow the instruction of the transport company when it comes to safety and order.

An option is for the parliament to pass a law. “Making personal protective equipment (such as mouth masks) compulsory in public spaces is only possible through a parliamentary law because of these fundamental aspects. A lower regulator like the city council can never do this.”

The other alternative is for the Netherlands to declare a state of emergency, as in other countries. “This way you can set aside the right to privacy. But the government apparently thinks that is going too far.”

Should the Netherlands pass a law making face masks mandatory? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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The Outbreak Management Team says there is not yet sufficient scientific evidence to prove that face masks are effective in curbing the spread of the virus. For that reason, face masks won’t be enforced nationwide.

However, some mayors want to be able to decide their own rules on this. For example, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where there are high infection rates, mayors want to decide to introduce local rules or face mask experiments. This is the result of a meeting of the security regions yesterday.

Varying local coronavirus measures are something we can expect to see more of, according to Hubert Bruls, Chairman of the Security Council. When it comes to regions experiencing higher levels of coronavirus infections, we can expect to see face mask rules, or experiments, taking place. “Those regions should also have perspective for how they can act. That means you’re going to see some differences. The good news today is that we’ve agreed on that.”

Different security regions will have different approaches to curbing the spread of coronavirus. Some mayors favour increased crowd control over face masks, which means that they want to spread people out more in crowded areas. Others say that they want to introduce face masks on top of the already existing measures, because some places are still too crowded.

Technically, though, emergency ordinances can only be decided by the Cabinet: mayors have no authority to do so, and neither does Parliament. Accordingly, it’s not yet clear how these local experiments are to take place.

Would you like to see face masks introduced in your home city? Let us know in the comments below.

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New research shows that the number of people who died from the effects of coronavirus in the first 11 weeks of the epidemic could be 50 to 100% higher than RIVM has documented. 

The research was released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on Wednesday after developing a new method for calculating excess mortality. The institute estimates that excess mortality was between 8,593 and 11,691 people between March 9 and May 24. In the same period, RIVM only registered 5,900 coronavirus deaths.

READ MORE | Coronavirus in the Netherlands: all you need to know [UPDATED]

“This means that in addition to every ten corona deaths registered, between five and ten people died from corona disease,” said CBS. However, CBS doesn’t have information about cause of death, so it cannot be certain that all deaths are due to coronavirus. This information is likely to be released at a later date.

Why is there a gap in reported deaths and excess mortality?

The excess deaths are because RIVM only includes deaths of those who already tested positive for the virus in the statistics. The Dutch government was criticised in the early days of the pandemic for its lax approach to testing. It’s likely that far more people died from coronavirus who were not tested at all. CBS says this led to the total impact of coronavirus to be underestimated.

READ MORE | Potential shortage of coronavirus tests in autumn

Calculating the excess mortality figure can give a clearer view of the impact, says CBS. The excess mortality figure is calculated using data from municipalities compared to the number of deaths in a comparable period.

Why did researchers not look after May 24?

After May 24 there was no excess mortality — essentially, fewer people died than would normally be expected compared to previous years. However, this could also be because the people who would have died during this period passed away earlier than usual, during the weeks of over-mortality.

Are you surprised by the latest information? Tell us your thoughts on the Dutch approach in the comments below.

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It will not be mandatory to wear a mask in public spaces, at least that’s what sources in The Hague have said to the NOS. The cabinet will probably announce this tomorrow. But it may become possible for mayors to introduce and enforce the use of face masks on a small scale, locally.

Today the Outbreak Management Team (OMT) came together to form some new advice on the effect of wearing nose and mouth coverings in public spaces in order to counter the spread of coronavirus in the Netherlands. Apparently, also after the new coronavirus numbers came in today; they’ve decided it isn’t necessary.

Therefore the government sees no reason to tighten the use of mouth masks. Face masks are now mandatory in public transport because travelers cannot keep a sufficient distance from each other.

Face masks policies might differ from city to city

The Safety Council will meet tomorrow in Utrecht, in which there are 25 Dutch safety regions represented. One of the cabinet ministers will also be there and the final corona measures will be discussed.

The public administrators hope to take measures at the regional level. The mayors of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, for example, want to be able to introduce a mouth mask obligation in their city. The OMT advice on face masks will be on the table at the Safety Council.

There has been discussion for some time now if whether a face mask should be mandatory on a national level. The cabinet has always maintained that this is not necessary, following the advice of the Outbreak Management Team. According to the cabinet, mouth masks would provide false safety.

Parliament wanted the Outbreak Management Team to issue new advice on Thursday because new insights in science would have changed the situation. The cabinet then asked the OMT to look into this.

Aura Timen of the OMT said earlier today that the advice would come “in a few days”. She did not want to say anything about the content of that advice.

Do you think face masks should be mandatory? Or should people simply obey the rules that already exist? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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After last week’s spike in new cases, this week’s coronavirus update was always going to be crucial. The number of new cases has increased again — but this week it hasn’t doubled. 

The RIVM reports that 1,329 people have tested positive for coronavirus this week. That’s 342 more than last week, so while we’re seeing an increase, it’s not an exponential one (last week the number of new cases jumped from 534 to 987, almost doubling). Hospitalisations increased slightly from last week: this week 23 people were hospitalised as a result of coronavirus, four more than the week before.

Deaths have also remained low and steady, with nine people sadly passing away from coronavirus this week, an increase of one, compared to last week.

Although this week’s figures are not nearly as bad as some of us might have been dreading, they are still bad news. The R number (the reproductive rate) is still above 1, which means that each person who gets coronavirus infects more than one other person. For the number of new infections to decrease, the R number needs to be below 1. This week’s R number is 1.4.

This week, 23,000 coronavirus tests were carried out, with about 1% of them returning a positive result, a similar figure to what we saw last week. The RIVM also reports that the number of infection-clusters is increasing, from 96 active clusters last week to 133 this week.

Finally, the number of infected young people is relatively high. One in five of the new cases this week is a person between 20 and 29 years of age. This is partly down to testing being available to everyone with symptoms, but also because of the higher amount of social contact young people tend to have.

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