I'm in Germany. Given the circumstances, I'd say the situation looks pretty good over here. Overall, up until now the pandemic has been managed quite well. So far, I personally don't know anyone who got COVID-19. I'm not afraid but I try to follow precautions diligently.

The response during the onset of pandemic (which amounts to roughly the end of February over here) and the first few months that followed in my opinion was appropriate and the outcome to some extent proved this as the infection numbers went down rapidly by mid-April.

Some of that was due to decisive action and a rather well-organised public health service but a fair bit of luck certainly was involved as well.

I'm more ambivalent regarding the mid- to long-term development, though. In general, I think that Germany, and Western Europe, for that matter, will weather this situation quite well and will mostly do fine. However, the wider economic repercussions still seem to be largely ignored. By autumn this year this is going to become interesting because that's when many SMBs eventually will have to declare bankruptcy.

At this point, during this phase of the pandemic, from my point of view there's also too much focus on the mere infection numbers. While those numbers have been increasing again lately - not the least because of massively expanded testing, which is a unanimously good thing - both the hospitalisation rate and the mortality rate remain remarkably low or are even declining. Hence, easing some measures, such as strict social distancing and the allowed attendance numbers for public events, and the consequences those entail for many businesses, might be justified.

This is going to be an interesting political discussion, to say the least, because while we now might indeed move into territory where COVID-19 in some places isn't any more dangerous anymore than the flu (due to better medical procedures and treatments, measures such as wearing masks, and indeed the virus apparently becoming less dangerous but more infectious over time), the narrative might shift from justifiably trying to prevent a healthcare disaster with potentially dire consequences to attempting to eliminate any remaining risk. Politicians might be tempted to argue that measures should remain in place until a sufficient part of the population is vaccinated.

Another aspect I find both encouraging and worrying for Germany specifically is innovation in general and digital transformation in particular. I was amazed at how quickly businesses adapted to new ways of working (which actually of course can't really be considered 'new' anymore) such as remote work, which they have been very reluctant towards before. How the federal government organised efforts such as the #WirVsVirus hackathon in March and the successful development of the local COVID-19 tracing app as open source software was no less amazing.

This transformation is still happening way too slowly, though.

Local health authorities for example often are still woefully stuck in the 80s and 90s in terms of processes and technologies used. Just recently, there have been several cases of thousands of COVID-19 test results being lost because authorities processed that data on paper and transmitted information via fax.

So, while the vast majority of people do their share and many businesses are struggling, some authorities still can't be arsed to update their processes. This is especially aggravating because the federal government provided ample funds specifically for that purpose.