‘Everyone was drenched in the virus’: was this Austrian ski resort a Covid-19 ground zero? | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/everyone-was-drenched-in-the-virus-was-this-austrian-ski-resort-a-covid
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/68c65fadd0c944a4651efda6667bd8c3a5e14d4f/0_0_4364_2620/master/4364.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
Covid-19, the “viral pneumonia of unknown cause” that Chinese officials first reported in Wuhan on 3 January, has transformed our way of life, upended geopolitics and precipitated an economic crisis of historic proportions. It has also revealed a strain of puritanism among people who thought themselves tolerant liberals: because the virus thrives in social situations, nothing has enraged us more during lockdown than seeing people having fun in large numbers.
In Europe, nowhere has drawn more of this anger than Ischgl, dubbed “Ibiza on ice”. Outbreaks in northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland have all been traced back to skiers returning home from the Paznaun valley, and the devastating reach of the Ischgl cluster is likely to be considerably wider: an Austrian lawyer compiling a class action lawsuit against the Tirol region, alleging it failed in its public health duties, has gathered the signatures of more than 6,000 tourists from 47 countries who believe they caught the virus in Ischgl, including people from Canada, Cambodia and Zimbabwe. Around 180 of them are British citizens, who took the virus back to London, Manchester, Birmingham, Norwich and Brighton.
In Germany, which supplies Ischgl with most of its guests, the outbreak has been the subject of a diplomatic war of words between Austrian and German politicians, who accuse each other of negligence, as well as numerous front pages. Fear of being branded the “next Ischgl” helped to enforce lockdowns across central Europe, such is the stigma attached to the resort’s name. Meanwhile, business owners in Ischgl say they have been scapegoated and that reports of orgiastic scenes are gross exaggerations. (Writing in the Daily Mail, columnist Jan Moir condemned skiers who had reportedly been playing a variation of beer pong, in which you spit a ball into a beer glass, with several players using the same ball. But none of the people I interviewed for this article can recall such a drinking game.) To an extent, the people who work in Ischgl have a point. The focus on a frantic party scene has helped to distract from bigger decisions taken – or not taken – behind the scenes, the missed warnings and a key question: did the authorities prioritise economic factors over the health of residents and visitors?
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