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Hello and welcome to a special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Forsythe and Fraser Nelson. Across Europe, we're seeing talk of new restrictions. In the case of Austria, a lockdown has now been imposed. And could it be that this is a sign of things that are going to come to the UK. James, just to begin,

can you talk us through how things are looking on the continent in the sense that Germany is

considering a lockdown? There seems to be real nerves. Casey, I think you asked the right

question. Is this going to end up coming to the UK? Boris Johnson likes to say that, you know,

you can see these storm clouds gathering in Europe and that means there's a risk of it coming here.

But if you talk to some of the COVID modelers, they will give you a slightly more optimistic explanation.

They say essentially what we're seeing in Europe is the effects of waning immunity from the vaccines.

And remember that the European vaccine program ran a little bit later than the UK's.

So essentially what you're seeing in

Europe now is, do you remember a few weeks ago there was a surge in cases here and people

were saying, oh, is the government going to have to introduce restrictions? What's going

wrong with the booster program? I think Europe is essentially at a similar place to that. Now,

Austria has relatively low levels of vaccination. And I think the most striking thing is how

quickly things have moved in Australia

this week. It started off with a lockdown for the unvaccinated. That's now turned into a firebreak

lockdown for everyone. And they're also announcing, I think they are the first Western democracy

to do this. They've also announcing compulsory COVID vaccinations now. Anyone who doesn't get vaccinated from February onwards, we'll have to pay fines.

If you won't pay the fines, you can end up facing prosecution. And that is a big departure.

No one has gone down that route before, not for specific professions. You've seen that here

with care homework as having vaccinations, but the whole population.

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