Saturday, August 15, 2020

Opening Up a Hornets Nest

There's a short piece in Focus today, which talks about Corona and the possibility that if you were a kid in a family that had a case....the state authorities might have the right to yank you out of the family home.

So the story concerns some Corona quarantine directions given for kids in the Ludwigslust-Parchim area of Germany (NE end of Germany, near Rostock).

Here was a kid who'd come into a class....had contact with teacher who was found to have Corona.  The instructions were noted by the mother, who got hyped up and went to the local newspaper. 

The mother was told (written instructions now)....that this kid should have "minimal contact" with the parents/brothers/sisters.  The note then said there had to be physical separation. 

Now, a normal family lives in a 75-to-100 square meter apartment/house, and it'd be rather impossible to invent this separation out of thin air.  I would suggest that 90-percent of all families in Germany....live in this dynamic.  Maybe these government folks all live in 200 square meter houses....but regular people don't. 

The note goes on to say that if you violated this 'order', various things could occur which meant the kid would be placed in a "suitable facility". 

Apparently, the note didn't really explain this in detail, and it just conjures up stuff from the DDR (former East Germany Communist system).  Where are these suitable facilities?  Unknown.  None of the journalists seem to have gone and asked for a tour.  So this might be simply 'hot air'.

But the journalists did go to the district authority and their spokesperson said that the letter was legally binding and could actually occur. 

They also said that there would be this step-by-step process where the authority and the family would meet, and everything explained in a "friendly manner".  Then the authority said that if one of the parents wanted to go into the voluntary situation with the kid....there would compensation (not from the business situation but from the local government). 

This is going to open up a hornet's nest, with thousands of parents engaged in bitter custody battles to prevent some government group from taking action....in the midst of a Corona situation. 

One could imagine that in a town of 10k residents....they might have one single facility big enough to house ten kids for a limited amount of time under this scenario.  Call it a quarantine-facility or youth-holding facility....it doesn't matter about the name.  Beyond the ten kids?  Don't make me laugh.  In a single week, you might have fifty-odd kids in this situation, and no way that the idiots could handle that type of scenario.

If this were me, and trying to handle this exercise of authority by the government with a 10-year old kid....I'd hand the kid a sleeping bag and tent....putting them in the backyard for the two-week quarantine period.  I'd tell the kid if any government guy comes for them....escape (over, and over, and over). 

If you wanted to brew negative feelings and anti-Corona conspiracy chatter....this type of government behavior would help in achieving that. 

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