German Kids and Covid?

 There's a piece in the WELT (German newspaper) this morning, by Ulf Poschardt, which I'd recommend a read today.

The center of this topic is Covid, but at a different angle.

Poschardt brings up the dynamics of Doctor 'Dooms' in Germany, political hype almost nightly about the epic collapse of society, the nitty-gritty of fear 'porn', and social panic.  All of this....delivered nightly by the news media across Germany. 

So his chatter is the impression of kids and teens.  He thinks they are interpreting this in a different manner and it's triggering panic attacks and stress. 

I sat and pondered over this.

In an average German household....between the TV/radio news in the AM, bits of info coming over the social media connection, and TV nightly news....he might have a point.  But if you asked most German kids how much news they really get....most will admit less than ten minutes a day.

If you peeled the corners of this topic back.....more than half the news for German kids (say between ages 12 and 16) is centered on entertainment, reality TV, new movies, and gossip over Hollywood types.  If you took a group of kids of a hundred kids around age 13....you'd probably find a major chunk of knowledge missing over the top ten topics of daily news.  

There might be some kids....say 10-percent of them....who get a nightly dose of Covid-hype and freaked out to some extent about the epic disaster unfolding (at least they perceive this event in such a way).

This is probably the kid who carries a bottle of alcohol gel in his pocket and douses every fifteen minutes, or who runs out of the classroom the moment that some kid in the back coughs. 

As for being something to worry about?  Well...maybe, but you'd have to develop some child clinic where they run a Covid-worry-rehab program.  Maybe these exist in the urbanized regions, but for the other 90-percent of the country?  I doubt it.

It's another segment of Covid that you have to wonder about.