Looking Back at Corona, Germany and January

Over the next week, I will cover Germany, the virus, and the four months. 

There are basically five things that you ought to take away from the Coronavirus business and things in January:

1.  The federal government came out on 22 January and basically said that the risk of spread was deemed 'very low health risk' (yeah, even lesser risk that old SARS virus).  We can laugh about this statement but this was early on.  With the statement came the notice that no one was talking about travel advisories.  They wanted you to know that fact.

2.  Five days pass (27 January), the first real infections are noted.  All in Bavaria.  All around this car parts company, and related to a Chinese business associate who flew in for roughly a week, had talks, and left.  Reassurances were given that this was contained. 

3.  A day passes.  On 28 January....the Health Minister (Spahn, CDU) stands up and says that he's more worried about fake news and conspiracy theories at this point.  Social media was doing more chatter than the federal authorities.  Maybe the authorities simply didn't have much to say.  A day or two after this chat, via public news forums, a virus expert said that this talk of the 2018 flu deal being a bigger thing....was the wrong thing to suggest. 

4.  On the same day, Lufthansa suspends all flights to China.  They didn't need the government directing them to do it.....they did it on their own.

5.  Around the last day or two of the month, if you were now worried, and wanted masks....it was now impossible to get them locally.  Even via the internet, you were now paying 50-percent more than the normal price. 

With that, January ended.  The Bavaria outbreak started people to ask questions....wondering about how it was passed around, and within a week or so....almost nightly forums (live) started up over Corona.  A national prep for the oncoming virus?  In January, you would not have noticed it in Germany.  Maybe the Health Minister and his people were doing things, but the rest of the country were simply viewing from a distance. 

I should also note....of all the potential characters that you could have had as Health Minister....this guy Spahn was like the Larry Bird of public health information, and not the type to be unprepared or screw-up in a public statement.  By the end of January, he was a nightly fixture on the public news system, or in public forums.