If you started out at 7 AM.....watching public TV, by 11 PM, you probably had ten full hours of Covid-chatter. What you had was a massive meeting of the Premier-Presidents from the sixteen German states in Berlin, and a big debate via the Bundestag that went on, and on, and on.
Confusing? Absolutely. There was clear disagreement, and it's a mess to detail out. So I'll offer my ten observations:
1. At almost every single interview for the evening....reporters asked....why are you dealing with this so late? (the hype is that numbers were on the rise five to six weeks ago, and this ultra-meeting should have been four weeks ago.
'Oh yes' says each guy/gal....blaming the coalition-building process and that the SPD, Greens, and FDP are not capable of multi-tasking. The explanation sounds like 'crap', and viewers just started shaking their heads after the third guy uses this logic.
Reporters are correct.....this meeting and ban rule situation should have been wrapped up on the final days of October.
2. Mandated vaccinations for all retirement home personnel and hospital staff folks (including ambulance drivers).
Regulations over this? Unwritten at this point.
Possibility that 50-percent of the retirement home folks and nurses are non-vax? Don't know....there are zero statistics known on this topic.
Would this trigger a massive firing episode if they refuse? Yeah, and both groups admit they are peeved over man-hours and low-pay. So this might brew into a five-star mess by January.
3. 3G rule for riding on buses or trains? Yes, you have to be vaxed-up, recovered or tested (all with proof in your hand).
Who would audit people? Bus companies have said their drivers won't be the ones. Suggestion is that the train audit folks will do some of this, and police will be in the mix.
Massive problem? If you are non-vaxed, and trying to get a test done at 6:30 AM for your hour-long ride to work....there are NO test facilities open.
ZERO statistical studies to show that Covid is spread via bus or train travel, which really begs the question of how this fixes or improves anything....but it makes daily travel nearly impossible for some folks.
4. 3G rule for work-place operations. Government put companies on the 'hook' to collect daily data and keep records. For a small ten-person operation.....not a big deal. For a 1,000-person industry operation....significant amount of work.
5. Mandated daily testings for all nursing/retirement home employees. A fairly stupid move because you can go back to September of 2020, and find retirement homes starting to do daily tests at that point, and by early 2021.....all of the facilities were doing this.
So this has almost zero achievement to it? Yeah....total waste of time discussing this and mandating it....if they already do it.
6. Nationwide rule for 2G (vaxed-up or recovered) for sports events or restaurant/pub action.
Big gain here.....lesser number of customers, and non-vax thrilled to be cast off away from sports events. Economic loss, but it's gotta achieve 'something'.
7. Another meeting in three weeks? Yeah. More ban-rules? No one said much but I would go to suggest that five or six more ban-rules pop up....mostly because the numbers trend isn't peaking yet.
8. Travel, hotels, etc? I'd say the last thing on Earth you'd want to do, with various rules in place and 2G being pushed....is travel. I would suggest a 90-day period where Germans try to avoid travel at all costs.
9. More police use to monitor compliance? Yes.
10. Hyped-up booster shot chatter, and the suggestion that 20-odd million Germans need a booster in the next five weeks (said by the Chancellor). Don't ask where this comes from or how they can achieve this type of number.
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