The Arctic circle reaches Europe. We also have the Nordic countries, the likes of Estonia etc and most of the big cities in Russia are in Europe. Europe does get very cold. Besides the point, where it doesn't get freezing in a lot of Europe it just rains all winter, thus pushing people inside and when it's not raining it's about 5 Celsius, sunny and dry (optimal conditions for covid.

In the UK for example from October-late January it's pisses down every week. We have a few storms this time of year but from December until February some years every week we have a named storm with 60-80mph winds and driving rain, which pushes even more people indoors. There's also the fact that the UK is pretty far north. In December the sun rises at like 8:30 and sets about 15:30. This causes vitamin D deficiencies, particularly with POC, thus further causing an impact with covid.

Winter here, just because it's not cold enough to make your balls stick to your toilet seat, definitely will give us no advantage over Dakota unfortunately

That being said, stay safe mate it's not fun living in a place with exponential growth :(