Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Virus Chatter

There is a public discussion which kinda started up yesterday.....under the subject area of Austria stopping an Italian train from entry until all occupants had been examined.  This also involved two ladies on the train (Germans) who had fever and coughs.....but were just plain regular flu....NOT the Coronavirus.   So the discussion is.....who exactly in Germany could conduct the same halt and bar sick people from entry into Germany.

The general consensus is that the public health authorities could do this, but some people suggest that the number of such authorities isn't enough to lock down the rail and bus network of Germany.  3,714 km's of border exist. 

One might go and take a humble guess that there are a minimum of 1,000 trains per day which cross the border.....some are ICE-related (high speed)....some are regional trains which cross over into the neighboring country.

The bus network?  It's probably in the range of 500 buses per day.  On a typical Friday evening to Sunday evening....there's probably at least 300 buses additional buses making the crossing with tourists returning home.

This opens up a whole big discussion because the German health authorities weren't built or geared toward some massive country-wide situation.  Even if you activated parts of the Bundeswehr (the German army)....it wouldn't be of the number required. 

So what happens?  I suspect that the news media will wake up and realize that hyping the virus....does not really help much.  Some isolation efforts will occur with smaller villages on some lock-down.  Locking down Frankfurt or Berlin?  I just can't see this happening, and the locals cooperating with the order.   

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