By LORI HIN­NANT, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

PARIS (AP) — Greeks who are over age 60 and refuse coro­n­avirus vac­ci­na­tions could be hit with month­ly fines of more than one-quar­ter of their pen­sions — a get-tough pol­i­cy that the coun­try’s politi­cians say will cost votes but save lives.

In Is­rael, po­ten­tial car­ri­ers of the new omi­cron vari­ant could be tracked by the na­tion’s do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty agency in seem­ing de­fi­ance of a Supreme Court rul­ing from the last go-round.

Week­ly protests in the Nether­lands over the coun­try’s 5 p.m. lock­down and oth­er new re­stric­tions have de­scend­ed in­to vi­o­lence, de­spite what ap­pears to be over­whelm­ing ac­cep­tance of the rules.

With the delta vari­ant of COVID-19 push­ing up cas­es in Eu­rope and grow­ing fears over the omi­cron vari­ant, gov­ern­ments around the world are weigh­ing new mea­sures for pop­u­la­tions tired of hear­ing about re­stric­tions and vac­cines.

It’s a thorny cal­cu­lus made more dif­fi­cult by the prospect of back­lash, in­creased so­cial di­vi­sions and, for many politi­cians, the fear of be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice.

“I know the frus­tra­tion that we all feel with this omi­cron vari­ant, the sense of ex­haus­tion that we could be go­ing through this all over again,” British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son said Tues­day, two days af­ter the gov­ern­ment an­nounced that masks would be manda­to­ry again in stores and on pub­lic trans­porta­tion and re­quired all vis­i­tors from abroad to un­der­go a COVID-19 test and quar­an­tine. “We’re try­ing to take a bal­anced and pro­por­tioned ap­proach.”

New re­stric­tions, or vari­a­tions on the old ones, are crop­ping up around the world, es­pe­cial­ly in Eu­rope, where lead­ers are at pains to ex­plain what looks like a failed promise: that mass vac­ci­na­tions would mean an end to wide­ly loathed lim­i­ta­tions.

“Peo­ple need nor­mal­i­ty. They need fam­i­lies, they need to see peo­ple, ob­vi­ous­ly safe­ly, so­cial­ly dis­tanc­ing, but I re­al­ly think, this Christ­mas now, peo­ple have had enough,” said Be­lin­da Storey, who runs a stall at a Christ­mas mar­ket in Not­ting­ham, Eng­land.

In the Nether­lands, where the cur­few went in­to ef­fect last week, mount­ed po­lice pa­trol to break up demon­stra­tions against the new lock­down, which is among the world’s strictest. But most peo­ple ap­peared re­signed to rush through er­rands and head home.

“The on­ly thing we can do is to lis­ten to the rules, fol­low them and hope it’s not get­ting worse. For me it’s no prob­lem. I’m a nurse. I know how sick peo­ple get,” said Wilma van Kam­p­en.

In Greece, res­i­dents over 60 face fines of 100 eu­ros ($113) a month if they fail to get vac­ci­nat­ed. The fines will be tacked on­to tax bills in Jan­u­ary.

About 17% of Greeks over 60 are un­vac­ci­nat­ed de­spite var­i­ous ef­forts to prod them to get their shots, and nine in 10 Greeks cur­rent­ly dy­ing of COVID-19 are over 60.

“I don’t care whether the mea­sure will cost me some ex­tra votes in the elec­tions,” Prime Min­is­ter Kyr­i­akos Mit­so­takis said Wednes­day af­ter law­mak­ers passed the mea­sure. “I am con­vinced that we are do­ing the right thing, and I am con­vinced that this pol­i­cy will save lives.”

Em­ploy­ing a car­rot in­stead of a stick, Slo­va­kia’s gov­ern­ment is propos­ing to give peo­ple 60 and old­er a 500-eu­ro ($568) bonus if they get vac­ci­nat­ed.

In Is­rael, the gov­ern­ment this week ap­proved re­sum­ing the use of a con­tro­ver­sial phone-mon­i­tor­ing tech­nol­o­gy to per­form con­tact trac­ing of peo­ple con­firmed to have the omi­cron vari­ant.

Is­raeli rights groups have de­cried the use of the tech­nol­o­gy as a vi­o­la­tion of pri­va­cy rights, and oth­ers have not­ed that its ac­cu­ra­cy in in­door places is flawed, lead­ing to large num­bers of peo­ple be­ing wrong­ly flagged. The Supreme Court ear­li­er this year is­sued a rul­ing lim­it­ing its use.

“We need to use this tool in ex­treme sit­u­a­tions, and I am not con­vinced we are in that kind of sit­u­a­tion,” Jus­tice Min­is­ter Gideon Saar told Is­raeli pub­lic broad­cast­er Kan this week.

In South Africa, which alert­ed the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion to the omi­cron vari­ant, pre­vi­ous re­stric­tions in­clud­ed cur­fews and a ban on al­co­hol sales. This time, Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa is sim­ply call­ing on more peo­ple to get vac­cines “to help re­store the so­cial free­doms we all yearn for.”

In the U.S., there is lit­tle ap­petite in ei­ther po­lit­i­cal par­ty for a re­turn to lock­downs or strict con­tact trac­ing. En­forc­ing even sim­ple mea­sures like mask-wear­ing has be­come a po­lit­i­cal flash­point. And Re­pub­li­cans are su­ing to block the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s new get-vac­ci­nat­ed-or-get-test­ed re­quire­ment for large em­ploy­ers.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, whose po­lit­i­cal fate may well hinge on con­trol­ling the pan­dem­ic, has used a com­bi­na­tion of pres­sure and ur­gent ap­peals to in­duce peo­ple to get their first shots or a boost­er. Al­so, the ad­min­is­tra­tion is work­ing to­ward re­quir­ing that all air trav­ellers to the U.S. be test­ed with­in a day be­fore board­ing their flight, in­stead of the cur­rent three days.

But Biden has said the U.S. will fight COVID-19 and the new vari­ant “not with shut­downs or lock­downs but with more wide­spread vac­ci­na­tions, boost­ers, test­ing, and more.”

“If peo­ple are vac­ci­nat­ed and wear their masks, there’s no need for the lock­downs,” he added.

The rise of the new vari­ant makes lit­tle dif­fer­ence to Mark Chris­tensen, a grain buy­er for an ethanol plant in Ne­bras­ka. He re­jects any vac­ci­na­tion man­date and doesn’t un­der­stand why it would be need­ed. In any event, he said, most busi­ness­es in his cor­ner of the state are too small to fall un­der the reg­u­la­tions.

“If they were just en­cour­ag­ing me to take it, that’s one thing,” Chris­tensen said. “But I be­lieve in free­dom of choice, not de­ci­sions by force.”

Chile has tak­en a hard­er line since the emer­gence of omi­cron: Peo­ple over 18 must re­ceive a boost­er dose every six months to keep their pass that al­lows ac­cess to restau­rants, ho­tels and pub­lic gath­er­ings.

And Chile nev­er dropped its re­quire­ment to wear masks in pub­lic — prob­a­bly the most com­mon re­newed re­stric­tion around the world.

Dr. Mad­hukar Pai, of McGill Uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Pop­u­la­tion and Pub­lic Health, said that masks are an easy and pain-free way of keep­ing trans­mis­sion down, but that cheap, at-home tests need to be much more wide­spread, in both rich and poor coun­tries.

He said both ap­proach­es give peo­ple a sense of con­trol over their own be­hav­iour that is lost with a lock­down and make it eas­i­er to ac­cept the need to do things like can­cel a par­ty or stay in­side.

Pai said re­quir­ing boost­ers uni­ver­sal­ly, as is es­sen­tial­ly the case in Is­rael, Chile and many coun­tries in Eu­rope, in­clud­ing France, will on­ly pro­long the pan­dem­ic by mak­ing it hard­er to get first dos­es to the de­vel­op­ing world. That rais­es the odds of still more vari­ants.

Lock­downs, he said, should be the very last choice.

“Lock­downs on­ly come up when a sys­tem is fail­ing,” he said. “We do it when the hos­pi­tal sys­tem is about to col­lapse. It’s a last re­sort that in­di­cates you have failed to do all the right things.”

That’s not how lock­downs are seen in com­mu­nist Chi­na, which al­lows lit­tle dis­sent. At each new out­break, en­tire cities are sealed, and some­times mil­lions of peo­ple un­der­go mass test­ing. In the strictest lock­downs, peo­ple are for­bid­den to leave their homes, and gro­ceries are brought to their door.

So far, Chi­na hasn’t seen the need for new re­stric­tions in re­sponse to the omi­cron vari­ant. The head of Chi­na’s Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy unit, Wu Zun­y­ou, said omi­cron, for now, pos­es a man­age­able threat, and “no mat­ter what vari­ant, our pub­lic health mea­sures are ef­fec­tive.”

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Nicholas Pa­phi­tis in Athens, Greece; Tia Gold­en­berg in Jerusalem; Aleks Fur­tu­la in Ni­jmegen, Nether­lands; Zeke Miller in Wash­ing­ton; Pa­tri­cia Lu­na in San­ti­a­go, Chile; Grant Schulte in Lin­coln, Ne­bras­ka; An­drew Mel­drum in Jo­han­nes­burg; Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Tai­wan, and Chen Si in Shang­hai con­tributed.