What a surprise – survey people as to if they think that the rules are good enough and they say “no, look at those idiots” yet actually impact someone personally and they dont want to follow the rules…
That is a problem indeed but not necessarily contradictory. Most people will follow the herd they are in and are weak to go against those shouting loudly. Hence they look to the government or whom else of authority to make things they want law. So then they can hide behind that when others want them to unwise things. That is why the minority of covid deniers are so dangerous as they lead others into temptation or even pressure them into defying the measures by threatening them with dismissal if they test themselves and what not.
So stricter rules and enforcement are actually helping to get those who would like to follow the measures but are tempted and threatened by those who do not.
Angela Merkel demands closure of european ski resorts
I think given the major role that skiing played in the first wave, this demand is understandable, but will be met with fierce criticism from the alpine countries.
On another topic, long term CV19 health issues appear to be mostly unrelated to the severity of the original illness, and the “condition” of the subject. Still not a lot of research is available, partly because the range of symptoms is very broad.
There is already extensive research on the long-term issues caused by the “normal” flu (cf. e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5596521/). Unsurprisingly, as they are related viruses, myocarditis and encephalitis feature prominently in both cases.
For once I agree with Merkel and also the Italians who have asked for the same thing. She simply should shut the borders to any country not in compliance. I suppose the Buneswehr should be up to enforcing that.
Seeing that Austria and France are shut down, the delinquent country is Switzerland so it might be time to show some force there. Shut the borders and throw anyone coming back in quarantine. That should do the trick.
But Germany appears also not to be serious… opening up for Christmas…. well third wave, here is your chance.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
But Germany appears also not to be serious… opening up for Christmas…. well third wave, here is your chance.
Well yeah, Germany is doing the modern German thing of discussing everything to death and taking days to flesh out a compromise that ultimately makes nobody happy and achieves very little. And no matter what one thinks of Merkel’s politics, but decision-making has never been her strong point…and in this crisis she is constitutionally unable to decide even if she wanted, because infectious diseases are a not a federal but a state matter in German law.
The council of the 16 minister presidents of the German states, plus the federal chancellor, is not actually in any way a constitutional gremium. Rather, it was set up ad hoc in this very crisis because there was political will not to have every state make up the corona rules by themselves. Which leads to these foul compromises, because the states have wildly differing ideas of what to do.
Personally, I am now heavily convinced that in stead of this “lockdown lite”, as the foreign media has called it, Germany should have gone for a very drastic “shut down everything” lockdown for 2-3 weeks. Instead, we now have a “lockdown lite” that will last for at least 6-7 weeks (Nov 2 to Dec 20) and achieve nothing expect starve certain parts of the economy to death and frustrate everyone.
MedEwok wrote:
Personally, I am now heavily convinced that in stead of this “lockdown lite”, as the foreign media has called it, Germany should have gone for a very drastic “shut down everything” lockdown for 2-3 weeks. Instead, we now have a “lockdown lite” that will last for at least 6-7 weeks (Nov 2 to Dec 20) and achieve nothing expect starve certain parts of the economy to death and frustrate everyone.
MedEwok, if we both hopefully are getting through this alive, I would love to buy you a drink at some stage.
You are darn right. Also, politicians are not the people who need to be in charge at this time, but in a pandemic or biowar scenario, you need people in charge who can decide accoring to a preplanned scenario and pull it through without anyone murmuring. In other words, the military.
Discussion will be interesting for some contributers to this forum.
https://www.icelandreview.com/news/bill-to-grant-health-minister-permission-to-impose-lockdown/
Wales has just finished a sort of strict 2 week lock down – Pretty well no effect.
Their regional gov promised no more lockdown/restrictions before Christmas
now with the results – or rather lack of them, they are murmuring about more restrictions
You would need a unfeasibly long lockdown for an unfeasibly large number of the population and that is simply not going to happen: it cannot happen.
The number of key workers essential to keep the country functioning is simply too large. Running water would fail to your house in 2 days without them in a full complete lockdown and many of the population would be dead/dying from lack of fresh water within a week.
As to the UK military doing anything ROTFL
Their size is half the UK police force and a fifth were declared unfit in 2019 – now you know why a load of jihadii’s ran them out of Basra
People talk about tanks blocking roads to stop movement (screams with laughter) – the TOTAL number of tanks in the UK army is 225 – yup that is indeed two hundred and twenty five!
Apart from getting special forces to start shooting BLM’ and other anti lock down demos getting them out is more than likely to provoke a full scale revolution and total breakdown in any from of law enforcement.
The Military are best used for logistics
Pim5 wrote:
Wales has just finished a sort of strict 2 week lock down – Pretty well no effect.
What are the reason it failed, apart from being too short? Usually results will beginn to show after 2 weeks… so a lockdown would have to be longer.
But what do they say? People did not adhere? People circumnavigated the lockdown or what?
Pim5 wrote:
The number of key workers essential to keep the country functioning is simply too large. Running water would fail to your house in 2 days without them in a full complete lockdown and many of the population would be dead/dying from lack of fresh water within a week.
You need that many people just for water supply? I would think that is quite improbable. I rather suspect that a lot of folk take themselves too seriously and manage to convince that they have to be important enough to go out… when they are not.
Well. What we do know now is that the world is not ready and able to deal with a pandemic. That is very good to know for anyone who wants to totally bring down the western democracies. Develop a virus which is 90% deadly and let it loose. It will be more effective than nuking them and will leave the infrastructure and riches mostly intact for the conquerers to move in.
Nope. What we see is that a large part of the population has decided that the benefit of reducing risk is not worth the price asked of them to keep it in check.
In some cases that may be pathetic (refusal to wear masks to protect others), or a bit egoistic (why should everyone pay or forego huge sums to protect those at highest risk).
I suspect if the virus indiscriminately killed 1 percent of the infected regardless of age we would see different behaviour.
In effect, we are asking those aged 60-ish and below to suffer huge economic loss to protect the 60-ish and above, and the population increasingly doesn’t support that.
