I don't think this virus cares if you lift restrictions or not, it will continue to spread since it already has done to most countries around the world. Internal hotspots and people travelling to and from those will be just as much of a problem as international travel.
I don't really agree with this point so much. China is there or thereabouts reached a level of stabilisation where they have minimal new cases, and they are trying to reduce it to zero new cases. If you have zero new cases over a period of time, then it is safe for life to resume to normal in that particular country. The issue then comes if you are letting people into that country who have travelled elsewhere and may have picked up the virus. That is why countries like China, also Poland etc have introduced measures that if you are returning to those countries you must stay in an enforced(by police) 14 day quarantine where you must stay in your house and not even allowed to step into your garden. This can then prevent the introduction of any new cases into a country.
Germany has had an extremely vigilant testing regime, testing 500,000 members of the public a week for the virus, they have managed to identify cases early on and therefore there are going to be far less unknown cases than in countries like the UK. They have managed to "flatten the curve" as only have 1/3 of the deaths of the UK but have identified 3x as many cases (which means with the UK only doing 40,000 tests a week there are many cases left unidentified). As they have managed to flatten the curve, life in Germany will be able to return to normality to some extent much faster than in the UK. This means leisure places like gyms, pubs, clubs and theme parks can slowly be introduced into every day life (with relevant measures in place) at a sooner date than in countries which had initially slower reactions. If you reach a point where new daily infections are on the decline the country will start to stabilise until you reach a point of no new daily infections,
as long as your border remains closed, you aren't letting new infections into the country and people entering the country have to take part in an enforced 14 day quarantine, otherwise this could cause a second wave.
The German government aren't treating more spacious parks like Europa Park any differently to parks on a smaller footprint like Phantasialand. They have advised all the German parks of the same opening date (20 April) to initially aim for, regardless of the size of the park. Whilst I still don't feel that is too realistic, the German government have managed this virus very well and therefore feels much more trustworthy than other countries which had really delayed responses.
^That's an interesting point to raise. For instance Europa Park nevermind guests, a large portion of the workforce are from France (around 1100 if I remember right). If the borders haven't yet reopened without them the park couldn't really open, or they would have to have a limited offering spreading German employees thinly across the park. Same would go for their water park Rulantica.
This is where the problem lies; I can see the parks having to move forward onto some sort of "pre-booking" system, where they are only allowed a certain number of guests in the park per day to keep everything under control. When europa does manage to reopen, they may only be allowed to take German visitors for the first few weeks and visitors from other countries may be banned from the park (and the country). If this is the case, there is also less demand for workers as there are less visitors in the park (therefore less retail staff are needed at one time, less trains needed on the rides as throughputs can be much lower etc).
With this whole virus situation, there is the struggle to balance between health and safety and saving the economy of countries. If workers (from France) are travelling across the border to go to work so that they can earn a wage and afford to survive essentially, then officials would probably permit that sort of essential travel. Testing could also be carried out on those up to 1100 workers from France going to work in the park to ensure none of them are bringing the virus between countries (Germany's testing has been very advanced and we hope over the next few weeks other countries can bring their tests up to an appropriate scale as well). However, I could definitely see for the first few weeks there being a blanket ban on any international visitors to the park as there are travel restrictions between borders.
