Covid-Chatter

 This got brought up in German social media (Twitter) chatter today, and it's just something to ponder about.

If you go and watch the public TV chat-forums....you come to notice four levels of Covid-chatter:

1.  The government Health Minister (Spahn, CDU Party).  He generally speaks to the government plan, and most would say that he is THE voice of government policy. 

(note: generally from all potential bureaucrats and incompetent idiots....on a scale of one to ten....Spahn is mostly a zero.  He hasn't done much to be recognized as stupid or incompetent...which is amazing in this day in age.)

2.  The Doctor-Dooms (there are around four of these guys who generally appear on public and commercial TV news).  I certainly wouldn't call any of them incompetent or radical.  They all seem to be rational in advice, but always on the side of less public contact.

3.  The anti-Covid-19 crowd.  These folks probably number around 10 to 15 percent of the general public and are identified as 'deniers' for the most part.  Anti-mask, anti-bans, etc.....these are the supported areas of this group.

4.  Finally....one single Covid-expert from the SPD Party (left of center party).  Yes, oddly enough....almost none of the other parties (AfD, CSU, FDP, Greens, Linke Party) have an expert who appears once or twice a week on some forum or chat-show.  The SPD?  Yes....they have a voice via public view.

Before Covid started up, if you went to public topics on health....they generally fell into three categories: rising cost of health care, extreme cost for retirement homes, and continuing trend of rural areas in Germany losing clinics, doctors and nurses.

That was it.  

Before 2020, most people were speculating that 2021's political season was mostly going to be about the environment and global warming.  Those topics have taken a backseat now, and won't be in the top three discussed items of 2021.