The cabinet will introduce new rules now that the number of infections is rising again. Catering establishments in Randstad regions with a large number of infections are not allowed to let anyone in from midnight and must close at 1 am.
Andreas Voss, professor of infection prevention, is critical of the new measure, but also understands it. “Human behavior is being hammered all the time,” says Voss. “Prime Minister Rutte does nothing else. But if you see that things are getting out of hand, then something like a poster does not help enough.”
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Moreover, it is mainly young people who take the corona measures poorly into account, such as the 1.5 meter distance and the maximum group size. “Students are generally intelligent, they are well aware of those rules.” Voss’ conclusion: behavioral education alone does not seem to work.
Smelly wounds
According to him, it is now time to go a lot further in the places where the corona virus strikes the worst. “I think we have to learn from the first wave. Closing the catering industry earlier is the first step.”
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Yet Voss doubts whether it is enough. “A virus does not keep to opening hours.” But, on the other hand: “If you can let liquor go into a person longer, it won’t get any better.”
Less and less control
Arnt Schellekens, professor of addiction and psychiatry at Radboud University, agrees. “There’s a build-up in the process of getting drunk,” he says. “You get the rewarding effects first, it gets more and more enjoyable, and the reward circuit in the brain is activated.”
And then the dampening effects of alcohol gradually take over. “The function of the front part of your brain, with which you control your behavior, decreases. Alcohol dampens the functioning of the brakes in the brain.” And then you can imagine, says Schellekens, that people are less and less complying with the corona rules.
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Operator response
The first thing Daan Smeltzer, owner of the Stan en Co café-restaurant in Utrecht, thought when he heard about the new measures? “Why are we the Sjaak again?”
“We have done pretty well”, he tells RTL Nieuws. “We do notice that people find it difficult to keep their distance, especially after a few drinks. But you do everything you can to ensure that guests comply with the measures. And that actually goes quite well.”
‘Don’t read a book’
Smeltzer does not believe there is anyone who will “sit on the couch to read a good book” after 1 a.m. “Of course, as the evening goes on, it becomes more difficult to adhere to the measures. That’s why you shouldn’t let them go home. Then leave them in a safe environment until the party is over.”
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But does that one hour, or those few hours, that the pub closes earlier help? Professor Schellekens says that no specific research has (yet) been done on this. “A lot is new, of course, in this period. There is little to hold on to. But we also know that you drink faster and therefore drink more as the evening progresses.”
According to the professor, you can assume on ‘theoretical grounds’ that people drink less alcohol if the pub closes earlier, and on that basis show less uncontrolled behavior.
Curfew
But what is the chance that people will continue to drink elsewhere? Schellekens: “That is difficult to say, we have to see that once the rule has been set. You can say: people do not want to go to bed yet, so they continue. But there is also a good chance that they will go to another place, such as park, to party on, is a threshold. “
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At the neighbors
In Belgium, the curfew has already been set: in July everyone had to be home between 11.30 p.m. and 6 a.m. According to initial analyzes by the Belgian Agency for Care and Health (AZG), this measure has been useful.
MSF states that the risk of infection will be significantly reduced if everyone is required to be home between 1:30 am and 5:00 am. This is stated in a letter from the Belgian governor Cathy Berx to the Belgian population. The curfew has since been lifted.
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Nevertheless, Voss, professor of infection prevention, fears that people will continue to drink in other places. Especially because there is no supervision there. According to him, a curfew would be the most effective.
Don’t sprint
Schellekens suspects that people with a curfew will also consume less alcohol: “Of course we are not sure. But there are studies that show that if people go into a pub later, and therefore start drinking later, they do not run for a sprint. to catch up. “
“On the basis of that data, you could assume that people will not catch up if the bars close earlier. People are not necessarily looking for a specific alcohol concentration: drinking is mainly determined by the peer pressure, the pace of that group. “
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