The Plan 'B' Path

 Last night, via ARD (Channel One public news)....the 9:45 PM news right off the bat featured a Covid piece (probably 12 minutes devoted to the topic).  

So eventually, they came to a live interview of the FDP Party 'boss'.  Somewhere in the middle of this 'talk'....Lindner (the 'boss') says nothing much from the current government strategy is working.  In simple terms, it's time to push the current plan and people aside, and look for a new plan 'B'.

The moderator (pretty smart/clever news guy) went at Lindner....how can you say that and challenged the idea.

But the problem here is that the numbers are the highest since day one, and hospitals (particularly in Bavaria and around the Jena area in the east) are filling up.  Whatever the strategy is.....it's not working.  

This is where my German wife piped up, in total agreement.

Here in the Rhine Valley (Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden).....around four weeks ago, all of the regional hospitals went to shut-down mode.  If you had optional surgical stuff planned....it got cancelled.  If you have a heart-attack, car accident or cancer....that's about the only way to get entry into hospitals right now.  Right off the bat, they will warn you....it's just the wrong time to enter.

They did the same thing in spring 2020, and toward November 2020....that last shut-down of hospital service went on until February.  

As the wife said....you can't run a 1st class medical system where the hospitals are all shutdown for service five months out of the year.  

So to Lindner's idea....new tactic and strategy?

Well....I noticed in the German news today....Pfalzer has announced success with testing for a treatment drug (pill, to be taken after you test positive).  No one says production schedule, but I would make a bet that it's going into mass production by late January, and this might be the game-changer needed.

The vaccination business?  In various countries, you have vaccinated people getting Covid to some degree....some more than non-vax....some less than non-vax.  The vax thinking along the lines of a game-changer strategy?  I suspect that's gone now.

As for mass shutdown?  I don't think Lindner supports that idea.  Nor is the school shutdown business probably going to be supported.  

As my wife stressed....general German patience for shutdown or curfew is pretty much shot now.  But she'll admit it....the plan 'B' idea is just sitting there, with nothing much to show presently.