1. Best quote of the day, related to the new ban rules for Monday? By Markus Krall: "The only thing that should be locked (down) in this country is the government."
A fair amount of criticism among the general public, and probably will translate over to political chaos for November.
The odds of another shut-down? Virtually zero at this point.
2. New RTL poll says two out of three Germans agree to Merkel's shut-down-lite directive.
It's not a great number but at least half the nation is going along with this.
3. New predictions within Hessen (my state) that the ICU bed situation will reach zero in about three weeks. Alternate plan being pushed up....they'd cancel elective surgery operations and turn those beds into Covid support.
The folks talking about this....say the ban rule change for Monday, does little to nothing to flip their prediction.
I should point out....just because you get Covid....does not mean that you get a slip to check into the hospital. The vast number of people (probably over 90-percent) are given home-rest slips....to quarantine there.
4. Corona-frustration is a phrase being coined now, and used by mental-health experts in Germany.
5. The German Golf Association is demanding an exemption to the sport ban rules. They say....since the whole thing is out of doors....with social distancing 'normal'.....they shouldn't be banned.
6. The 'deal' for German business operations shut down by the November mandate? Basically, you get 75-percent of your income that was reported for November 2019, from the federal pot of money.
A good deal? Well....you'd say what about the 25-percent of income that isn't coming? Yeah, that's the real item of discussion. Some pubs and restaurants are sitting there in a very negative state of mind....there's no fairness to the 'gift'.
7. No matter where you are in Germany on Monday night.....there is a booze-freeze from 11 PM to 6 PM, for public consumption of alcohol. So even if you had a six-pack with a friend on some city park bench at 1 AM....that's illegal and would be fined. That's the deal for the whole month of November. Drinking in your house or on your patio? Still ok (at least for now).
8. You can travel and use hotels, but ONLY for business-related situations. No tourism can exist for the month of November.
9. Shopping on Monday and the rest of November? Well.....the rule is one customer per each ten square meters. I would imagine some guard will be at each grocery store, and monitor the incoming and outcoming customers (again).
10. The absolute minute you are noted as 'positive' on a Corona test, you are to go into quarantine then. No stopping off for beer or groceries....failure to comply is a 500 Euro fine.
11. If you do group travel to work (some unions arrange for a 7-to-10 pax van to transport folks from one town to the industry)....all occupants in the van must wear a mask as of Monday, for the entire trip (each way).
12. The funding 'pot' of money for compensating companies for the loss of profits? Well....if you dig into this story, it amounts to 10-billion Euro. A fair amount of discussion has started up. Majority of business folks don't believe it'll cover the extent of requirements.....in fact.....they suggest it'll exceed 30-billion Euro by early December. Do the Bundestag folks know this? Hard to say.
13. As of Monday, if you are walking in any area where the 1.5 meter distance cannot be ensured.....the mask is MANDATED (period, no exceptions).
14. As of 7 PM last night (Thursday), 16,286 new infections were reported in the previous 24 hours. Deaths in the same period: 92. 83-million residents, for reference.
As for my local area (Wiesbaden), the new infection number for the past 24 hours is 108, with a total of 505 individuals in the community on some form of quarantine. Total of 291k residents, for reference.
15. More German lawyers are standing up and suggesting that the new ban rules can be challenged in court, and possibly overturned.
16. For the fancy color graphic used nightly by the public news folks....it was a color-coded deal. This week, they had to go and invent a new color (for areas with 150 infections or more per 100k people). The new color? Black. Really stands out when you gaze at the map.
17. Among all the ban rules put up and new.....there's this one ban rule which is begging questions. The German authorities invented a rule that says that 'body-hugging services are forbidden....starting Monday'.
I paused over this....wondering what they meant by body-hugging. Hookers and prostitutes would have been spoken in a different way. Maybe there's some type of commercial service in Germany that I'm unaware of....where you pay someone to come up and hug you once or twice a day.
It's best not to ask questions over this....it'd just lead to some conversation that goes on for an hour or two....where a German talks real personal stuff on hugging.
18. Finally, Frankfurt's airport chatted on Terminal Three (under construction).
Normally, the plan was for it to be somewhat operational by the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022. Yesterday, they said they've slowed down the construction project (a lot). They admit....they don't even have enough operations to run terminal two at this point.
So the new operational date for terminal three? 2025.
I should note here....terminal three was supposed to be discount airlines (the no-thrills folks). It's also being built on the other side of the runway....away from terminal 1/2.
On jobs at the airport? They appear to have enough volunteers to take early retirement....that laying folks off in 2021 won't be required. On contractor workers? Well....different story. They are re-writing the contracts, and fewer folks will be required....so those contractors (probably by spring 2021) will be laid off by their contractor companies.
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