What our German government tried to do could have worked in theory. Our government just got the timing wrong, and now fucks up more and more every day.

In mid-October, amid growing case numbers, chancellor Merkel and the prime ministers of our federal states held a video conference discussing tightened measures. (Think of a round between the potus and the governors for an American equivalent.) They couldnt agree on a set of measures and adopted a wait-and-see approach. Two weeks later, in early November, they met again in the face of more rapidly surging cases and imposed what they call "lockdown light", which was a set of half-assed measures and basically only ment that restaurants, hotels, zoos, museums, gyms and amateur sports had to shut down, but schools, businesses and factories as well as retail stayed open. The PR strategists used the framing "tidebreaker lockdown" and told us it would be for one month, until the end of November. (Yeah, right, who the fuck fell for such an obvious lie?) The idea behind this approach was to reduce daily contacts in society in those areas which were deemed disposable and least harmful to our overall economy. That's also the reason why they insisted on keeping schools open - they didnt want parents to be unable to go to work because they have to look after their kids.

This lockdown-in-name-only was partially successful in that it stopped the exponential growth of our infection numbers. But instead of the gradual decrease of the daily cases that they had hoped for, it only caused our cases to plateau on an already too high and unsustainable level, at around 18k cases per day in the weekly average. (For our American friends: Germany has one fourth of the population of the U.S., so multiply any numbers times 4 to get the American equivalent.) Starting about a week ago, in early December, experts and some of the more covid-hawkish politicians (including Merkel) started ringing the alarm bell and calling for a "hard lockdown" after Christmas. Since most of our states have Christmas holidays of around 2 weeks after Christmas anyway, this would be the perfect timing from the perspective of our society and our economy - retailers could take the main business of the year and then shut down during the time of the year where they dont make a lot of revenue anyway. Many factories and offices are shut during this time period anyway every year. And since kids are always home from school, it wouldnt be an extra burden on parents (or their employers).

Unfortunately, cases started going up again in recent days, and our fucked up MSM is running a concerted PR effort to build public pressure for starting this "hard" lockdown even before Christmas, probably starting next week. Our politicians are sure to cave, as they always do. To be fair, part of this media campaign was probably coordinated with those politicians who want these measures. Either way, it's a complete disaster which will devastate our retailers and inner cities. It should be noted that our incidence in terms of cases and deaths in about on par with many of our neighbors or even better. The UK, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Poland all have comparable or even worse numbers, yet we are the only country where our politicians and media are panicking and losing their cool. Useless, incompetent fucking morons. (There are of course tons and tons of epic fails on smaller issues of execution, like e.g. failing to provide FFP2 masks for nursing homes (and their visitors) in time or failing to ramp up the staff of our contact tracing teams during the calm summer, etc., but I'll spare you the details.)






So, what's the bottom line? The bottom line is that we could have hit the perfect strategy if only the very mild and bearable"lockdown light" had been enacted 2 weeks earlier, in mid-October instead of early November. In that case, our daily numbers would have plateaued at 10k instead of 18k. We would have a far lower death toll, our hospitals would not be nearing the breaking point yet and we wouldnt have to shut down retailers before Christmas (which is insanity from an economic perspective). We would have comfortably gotten to the after-Christmas lockdown which would have brought our cases down again; and we could have presumably gotten over the winter without further proper lockdowns afterwards. By just fucking up the timing by 2 weeks, we are instead in the worst of two worlds: high numbers, high deaths, a premature proper lockdown and huge economic damage.

Simply put, there imho is a lot of path dependency involved in covid decision making. Once our state PMs decided to delay and half-ass the reaction, we imho were set on course for the "American" yolo approach to handling the pandemic. Changing course NOW is a huge fucking mistake and will, in the very long run, cause far more damage than just sticking with the botched strategy, put up with a somewhat higher death toll and wait with the proper lockdown until after Christmas, like originally planned. And all of that only because these fucking morons dont have the balls to either act in timely fashion or now cope with a higher death toll for a couple of weeks. I'd be fine with both approaches to be honest, but the indecisiveness and cowardice displayed by our political class is an embarrassment. And that's of course on top of all the technocratic failures that I mentioned above.

In retrospect, what I had been saying in spring has proven true: that Germany got over the first wave so well was more due to luck than skill. Whereas our leaders got most things relatively right in spring, they're now getting everything wrong.


To wrap up my rant, here's a chart:


This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 11 2020 11:03pm

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/money-report/yelp-data-shows-60-of-business-closures-due-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic-are-now-permanent/2775013/?amp

“screw your mom and pop stores, shop at target!!!” the rallying cry of massive lockdown/shutdown proponents even though masks are required by local/state govt mandate. 15 days indeed!

“Riots are okay because white supremacy is a bigger threat than coronavirus”

You'll need to show some numbers to back that claim up. Most recent numbers I've seen indicate that a mere 20K or so have "died from covid" total in the US, from January to today.

As it turns out, the overwhelming majority of deaths that have been marked down as "covid-related", covid was merely a comorbidity. And the staggering majority of those who've died are aged 70+ and would likely have died when they did regardless of Covid.

Honesty is required here, big time. As with the Flu, the overwhelming majority of Covid deaths are due to Pneumonia. As in, covid didn't kill the patients, it was the Pneumonia that killed them. The second cause of death is cardiovascular failure, due to cardiovascular disease. Sure, Covid may have sped up the end result, but the end result would have been the same either way, plus or minus a month or three.

But yeah, very very few Americans have died "from covid". And for the absolute majority of working age population, covid is not a real concern. Get it? So what. It's like any other respiratory infection. Lose your sense of taste/smell for a bit, feel a tad fatigued, maybe a bit of a cough or shortness of breath. Lasts for a few days, then all's well. Seriously, the Flu is a much more irritating virus to contract. Covid's just a cold for all but the most elderly in the population. The solution isn't to lock everyone down, destroy millions of small businesses, and funnel all the wealth of the nation into pharma companies for a fast and relatively untested vaccine, and into Amazon and Target and Walmart since everywhere else is closed. The obvious solution is to let life continue as normal for all but those in the highest risk groups, who should have been incentivized to self-quarantine.

The "lockdowns" are not quarantines. Because a quarantine is the act of locking down the sick to protect the healthy. These "covid lockdowns" are called "Martial Law". And the impact is far more devastating than Covid ever could be. Current estimates, due to broken supply chains is that upwards of 100 million will die worldwide as a result of STARVATION, thanks to the idiotic policies implemented "because coronebola!" It's sickening.

You're conflating "cause" and "contributing factor" (comorbidity).

Someone who has asthma who subsequently contracts COVID-19 and dies from it isn't killed by the asthma. The asthmatic condition is a contributing factor, but the introduction of a respiratory virus to the body of someone, who had otherwise been living fine with the underlying asthma, is the actual cause of death. Remove the virus from the equation, and that asthmatic person is still alive.

Reading you it's too late and big lockdown will cause economic damage, so few dozen of thousands must die.

This is false. If the person dies from an Asthma attack, then they died from Asthma. You're making the assumption that the asthma attack may not have been lethal were it not for covid, but unless you present absolute proof of that, I'm just going to go right ahead and call you on your bullshit.

Covid is the "contributing factor", not the cause of death. Remove the Asthma from the person, they'd still be alive. Because it was the Asthma attack that killed them, not covid.

"Your money or your life." Expression

=>

"My money or your life." lol.

not a big fan of money tbh or rather... what it takes to get more
as long as i can maintain my very fast car and have a nice home in a beautiful town in the safest neighbourhood in this country and bin gallons of liquor and cases of smokes and cook healthy and tasty food and, from time to time, do laundry, shower, toothpaste etc and have hot water to wash my shoes
idk. jsp seeming hard on the money game right now but then again -------............. get it while it's good
hmm