Sunday, March 22, 2020

Germany and the Coronavirus: 23 March 2020

1.  Infected:  24,819 (Focus numbers)   Dead:  97 (Focus numbers).  Oddly enough, Berlin-City has barely edged over the 1,000 infected point, and only one death attributed to a resident of the city.

2.  Foreign Ministry of Germany has announced some deals being worked out via the EU....to bring a bunch of stranded Europeans back to their home-countries.  N-TV covered a good piece on this.  100,000 Germans in this group and another 100,000 from various other European countries.  Bill for this?  Unknown....but has to be in the tens of millions to arrange 'private' flights with the airline community.

3.  N-TV put up a great economic piece, talking over the potential for bankruptcy for the next couple of months.   Highly recommend a read of it.  Could be a lot of German companies who don't survive this period, unless the government comes to rescue them.

4.  Death rate in Germany at .4-percent among those who are infected, while the rate is 4-percent in most other countries?  Yes.  No rhyme or reason.  I will admit, a higher percentage of older Germans are put into retirement homes, while in most countries.....the family would have the older member in their house.  Beyond that, there is no logical reason.

Science does say that the virus stays on a counter-top for up to 24 hours.....unless you clean or wipe it.  Maybe that obsession about keeping things tidy does pay off in Germany.

5. Chancellor Merkel in quarantine?  Yes, only because a person has it who she had contact with.  So she's out for two weeks?  Yep.  A big deal?  No....she'll work from home, and I doubt if anyone will really miss her that much.  The Health Minister (Spahn) is the guy who appears on TV a dozen times a day anyway.  Back-up Chancellor?  The SPD guy serving as Finance Minister.

Her age?  65, so that puts her in the rough category if she does have the virus.  Potential diabetes?  For the past year, several things have popped up to suggest that she has some type or form of diabetes.  That would another negative factor to the situation.

6.  Barbers and hair-dressers forbidden to open?  Yep.  They will be shut-down for at least two weeks.  Same for tattoo shops and cosmetic operations.

7.  There's a brief note that popped up this morning.....down in the state of Baden-Württemberg....a regional lab that does the virus sample evaluations has had a problem with roughly 2,000 samples. Basically, they will toss those....contact the folks who thought they'd get good news and find out that another sample is required and another day of testing is required.

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