How many friends should you have? Five? Ten? Fifty? The Greek Ministry of Health thinks it knows better. “If the authorities at the New Year’s party count more people than are counted, they will fine you,” the TV channels reported, citing sources in the Ministry of Health on Thursday.
Orwell’s dystopian threat, 1984, refers to private New Years Eve parties because new restrictions to contain the spread of coronavirus will come into force on December 30, 2021.
The government was able to ban music in public places, but did not dare to impose the same ban on private gatherings at home or limit the number of people participating, as it did in the first year of the pandemic, for example. Nevertheless, the authorities are trying to gain complete control over the situation, although everyone knows that this is impossible.
Hours after the measures were announced early Wednesday morning, Greeks – especially young people – began organizing their parties away from the public with crowds, music, drinking and dancing.
An ambitious health minister, a control freak, quickly realized that these “rebels” would order Airbnb for sinister parties on the last day of the year. Therefore, an additional warning was issued that the authorities will count and fine you if they think that you are not worthy to have so many friends at the party.
According to a relevant ministerial decision, published in the official gazette on Thursday, “it is prohibited to hold parties in a public or private place in order to avoid transferring entertainment to other places.”
From today [30 декабря] until January 16, heavy fines will be imposed for organizing parties and other events in private premises in order to restrict private gatherings, which could be disastrous in the next 24 hours, i.e. on New Year’s Eve”.
The fine starts from 50,000 euros and can reach 200,000 euros if the organizer or host of a party in a private house is found to be in violation of the law again.
The question to be answered is: how will the authorities gain access to a private house for one by one counting of guests without a prosecutor’s order?
And how do they know if the organized party is somewhere in A, B or C? Answer a phone call and a denunciation of a harmful neighbor? Follow the music?
All this nonsense on the part of politicians makes me turn on loud music tomorrow night, leave all my 3 cats at home and go to my friends.
I could also invite about 50 people and wait for the authorities to come and tell me that I don’t deserve to have 50 friends because I’m mean and nasty and I’m a bad host because I only have beer and chips or I burned a pie in the oven.
Seriously. What’s happening?
PS
EODY Official Data December 30
Tests in the last 24 hours: PCR: 60 693 Rapid: 363 989
PCR + Rapid positivity: 8.38%
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,170,293 have been confirmed infected in Greece (daily change + 3.1%). In the confirmed cases over the past 7 days, 217 infections were associated with travel from abroad and 1,410 with other confirmed cases.
Over the past 24 hours, 72 deaths have been recorded, bringing the total number of victims of the pandemic to 20,708. Of these, 95.2% had an underlying disease and / or were 70 years of age or older.
636 patients are being ventilated in hospitals, up from 620 the day before.
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