1. Deaths: 1,577. Infected: 98,945 (Focus numbers). Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria and the state of NRW make up almost three-quarters of the deaths.
2. Lufthansa, in an act with the German government, is trying to airlift out of Australia and News Zealand....several thousand stranded Germans.
From Frankfurt, a series of five Airbus 380s and three 747s will be flown to Thailand, where the crews will be switched (leaving one crew for roughly 24 hours), and the flights will continue on to either Sydney or Auckland. One crew will apparently get off there, with a rested crew from that flight....flying them back to Thailand, where another refueling will take place.
This should wrap up the 'stranded' Germans in the Pacific problem. One oddity about this flight business is that all of the flights are scheduled after 11 PM at night, at Frankfurt, which is typically 'forbidden' to occur.
3. Some crime chatter starting up that since restaurants and bars have been shut down for a month.....virtually no money-laundering is taking place in Germany. True or false? No one can say. Virtually no restaurant is making money unless they have a take-out operation going on. Bars are absolutely empty.
4. The Love-Parade court case is under an advisement to halt. Here, in this case....it concerns an event from July of 2010. There is a ten-year limit on the crime....so if they stop now....the court will not be able to convict anyone after July of 2020, and the guilty parties (if there ever were any) would walk away. The court is asking for the prosecution and defense, how they want to go forward.
5. I've been to four grocery stores over the past 24 hours.....none of them had any toilet paper. Same story for flour, and a diminished quality of canned goods. I tried to go and make a tire purchase (new summer tires), and the German guy was insistent.....no sales until the ban on operations is concluded. The funny thing is that I can go online and order the tires to be delivered to my house (mounting them would be the next problem though).
6. Luxembourg has asked in a strong way for the border controls to be 'relaxed'. They depend a great deal on German and French workers.
7. The virus is now noted in 300-plus nursing homes in Germany. So the death count will probably double up shortly.
8. Car sales in Germany are virtually down to ZERO. So there is fear at this point, and suggestions to help jump-start sales. Three of the ideas being discussed: (1) temporarily dumping the C02 tax, (2) temporarily dumping the diesel bans in several cities, (3) Adjust electrical prices for electric car use (Germany is one of the higher cost countries for electrical usage). They also are suggesting a cut of some type on the VAT for new cars.....but that's probably a forbidden topic.
9. Spain is going into discussion of creating a 'Basic-Income' situation for the crisis period, where every Spaniard adult would get x-amount of money on each normal pay-day. Details are not really existing (for example, the amount).
Where would the money come from? Well....either they'd invent new tax vehicles, or the government would go and borrow a sum of money to make it for the time being. How long would this last? Unknown.
The idea that this might be permanent? You'd have to pass massive taxes to make this possible, and that would make Spanish products, services, and tourism a difficult topic to sell. It does make sense for a 60 to 90 day period to carry something like this. But I also think people might be shocked to find that the amount is only 700 Euro, and marginally just enough for food and wine. Making it 2,000 Euro a month? There's a lot of debt to be created and you have to wonder how this will be resolved when the crisis ends.
10. General negativity against the WHO? If you asked 99-percent of people (not just Germans).....they have a marginal idea of what the WHO is about and most have no value upon the organization. Negativity? Well, what you can say is that in early days of Wuhan (throughout January)....they should have been there and suggesting ways to control the virus from spreading. Declaring it a pandemic? Some people would suggest they were four weeks too late.
11. If you leave the Federal Republic of Germany (even for just a day)....unless you are a political figure, a trucker or in some capacity of the health support....you have to do 14 days of self-quarantine. There's a proposal going on for fines now.....if you fail on the self-quarantine.
12. If you look at Wuhan news of the past day or so.....the ban on exits is wrapped up, and tens of thousands are lined up to leave. I kinda think that they won't be coming back. Losing a million residents in six months? It wouldn't surprise me at this point. The question would be....if the herd starts moving.....does it influence the rest of the city as well?
No comments:
Post a Comment