1. Locally (in my city of Wiesbaden), this morning, they reported the 25th death since day one (older retired guy in a retirement home). Since day one, a total of 1,361 infections reported within the city limits (291k residents). 1,185 folks are recovered from Covid-19.
2. Berlin bar owners went to court about the 11 PM curfew. Judge stood up yesterday and said it wasn't a legal curfew. Probably going to draw debate within the city lawyer group.
The chief anti-curfew argument? Once you close at 11 PM....young people don't go home....they go to underground parties or non-legal bars, to continue drinking. It's hard to get this fact across to the political establishment (they believe people just go home at 11 PM).
Big disconnect with medical establishment and politicians on understanding how the 'real' world operates.
3. Local news from the Hessen region suggested that in one supermarket (Frankfurt area)....they had another run on toilet paper (selling out). This was a big issue for March, April and May. Hard to imagine what these people are doing with this much toilet paper. Some probably already have a 3-year supply in the basement.
4. As of this morning (Sat), RKI is reporting 7,830 new infections (since Friday morning). Some suggestions in the news suggest another round of harsh ban rules by end of next week. Shut-down chatter? To some degree.
5. SE neighborhood of Neukolln (of Berlin) has a massive infection rate. Local health control admits they are stretched to the limit. Crisis chatter if you go look at social media for the neighborhood.
6. German Army has detailed a minimum of 15,000 troops to help with management, logistics, and control, for the state governments. Lot of the deployments were going on in the summer period, but has ramped up another notch or two since early September. There is a suggestion going on that older students (suggesting 16 to 20 years old) could be offered temp-jobs (no one says pay schedule or hours)....to fill in. A lot of this is simply paperwork, contacts and databases, which an untrained 'kid' could learn in eight hours.
7. Some chatter starting up about getting Christmas 'buying-season' started in the next week (late Oct). All political in nature, and it's hard to imagine how they'd push the button to make this happen. Also tied to Christmas bonus money, and some idea that companies could be encouraged to hand the money out early, and get people hyped up to buy stuff in October and November.
Finally, personal observation: whatever the real infection rate was in March/April as the massive shut-down occurred across all of Germany....it's fairly easy now to forecast we will hit that level by the end of October. The real question here, which does drift a lot around social media....will the government go and force another shutdown (say for four to six weeks)?
Presently, one might suggest that a quarter of the population has become awful skeptical of the virus information and the ban rules. Mandating another shut-down would trigger a lot of questions, and potentially more Germans going to the skeptics group. This push-back by the Berlin court on the booze control/curfew business is probably an indicator that a shut-down with massive ban rules would be facing court review, and counter-push-back.
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