International COVID-19 Megathread

[Middle-aged Europe]

Germany's current infection rate is still half that of the UK though.

We're maybe a little prone to panicking though.

[Middle-aged Europe]

341 new cases for Germany yesterday - the Sunday before it was 249.

Sunday numbers are considered to be a bit unreliable, because not all local health authorities are reporting test results that day. Today there were 633 new infections, which is a bit of an improverment over the ca. 800 per day towards the end of last week, but still higher than the average of 400 we had before that surge.

[Middle-aged Europe]

What's going on in North Rhine-Westphalia?

Nothing much... the new local hotspots seem to be in Bavaria now in the counties of Dingolfing-Landau in the southeast (they had a farm with nearly 200 infection among its employees) and Hof in the northeast of the state.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Amidst a continuing flre-up of cases in Germany, 20,000 anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protestors went to the streets of Berlin yesterday to express their outrage against Bill Gates or something. The protest was eventually broken up by the police because nobody cared to wear masks or keep distance to their fellow protestors, despite being urged so by the authorities.

My personal opinion: Of course you are free to oppose a hypothetical second lockdown and wholeheartedly embrace the Swedish coronavirus policies, but these people don't seem to be willing to do anything to actually prevent another lockdown themselves. They fail to understand that the key to Sweden's response was based on personal responibility and they refuse to act responsibly. This is because there is unfortunately a huge intersection between people who oppose any anti-coronavirus measures and people who believe that the coronavirus is totally harmless and that there's a government conspiracy to hide that "fact".

[Middle-aged Europe]

Germany yesterday for the first time in months has reported over 1,000 new cases a day. Experts are still cautious to call it a second wave. If anything, a more flat one so far.

In Berlin, all three "Corona warning lights" are still green and the base reproduction number is at 0.76, so who knows what the hell is going on.

[Middle-aged Europe]

According to German health minister Jens Spahn, 2.0% to 2.5% of returning vacationers who have been tested on coronavirus have tested positive, while the number for the remaning general population is at 1.0%.

[Middle-aged Europe]

According to German health minister Jens Spahn, 2.0% to 2.5% of returning vacationers who have been tested on coronavirus have tested positive, while the number for the remaning general population is at 1.0%.

In Germany, there have been first calls to reinstitute travel bans to certain foreign countries. New infections are at 1,147 today.

[Middle-aged Europe]

German health minister Jens Spahn: The healthcare system can handle around 1.000 new infections per day.

Also: We've learned enough from the first lockdown that a second lockdown in the same manner wouldn't be necessary, primarily regional measures would be more likely.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Willingness to get vaccinated against coronavirus in Germany, across parties (left: yes, right: no).





Opinion on the economic state of the country, across parties (left: good, right: bad).

[Middle-aged Europe]

Like in previous days, Germany again has over 1,000 new infections within 24 hours. We're back at late May levels at this point. Probably travelers make up the lion's share here. Data from Northrhine Westphalia show that a quarter of newly infected people recently traveled abroad for vacation.

It's also leading to a bit contradictory policies, at least here in Berlin. Restrictions for cinemas have been lifted further, because that's something that has been coming for a while and nobody wanted to cancel this additional liberalization now. At the same, prohibition may finally be coming to Germany's capital! Following the reasoning that the spike in infections is the result of people not minding the physical distancing rules when being stern drunk, there are plans to ban pubs and kiosks from serving and selling alcohol.

Worth pointing out that there is really nobody who's suggesting a second lockdown or a return to really harsh restrictions at the moment... perhaps with the thought in mind that a second lockdown could wreck the economy beyond repair and/or that it would be really, really hard to achieve a political consensus to implement another lockdown in comparison to the first one. So, maybe we're going to Sweden now..

[Middle-aged Europe]

In a controversial move, Berlin has decided to ban large-scale anti-restrictions/lockdown/vaccination protests planned for this weekened. The reason for the ban is that the last time such protests happened nobody was wearing a mask or practicing physical distancing there. It is considered controversial because an increasingly radical anti-restrictions/lockdown/vaccination scene is considering Germany to be a totalitarian dictatorship akin to the 1933-1945 Nazi regime due to the anti-COVID restrictions and the protest ban may be regarded by them as proving their point.

Depending on their grade of radicalization, various representatives of the anti-restrictions/lockdown/vaccination scene have either announced to a) challenge the ban in court, b) ignore the ban altogether and go protesting no matter what or bc) arm themselves and prepare for the "Battle for Berlin" (the latter announcements only happened online, of course). I  guess this Saturday practically anything could happen, from basically nothing to riots in the streets. Have fun.

[Middle-aged Europe]

This is clearly unconstitutional.

Not necessarily, since some legal experts say that it is in fact constitutional given there have always been some leeway for authorities to ban assemblies and protests under specific circimstances and that legally speaking there may be reasonable cause for such a measure here. Most criticism therefore focuses on the aspect that politically speaking it is not a very smart move to make. The latter might in fact also serve as reason for striking down the ban, since Berlin's interior minister Andreas Geisel perhaps made the mistake of mixing legal and political justificiations in explaining the ban yesterday therefore giving the impression that it isn't entirely based on legal grounds.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Giving rising infection numbers in Berlin, the German federal and state governments are planning to pass country-wide coronavirus restrictions for the first time since early June. The federal government's proposal amounts to:

- Private parties are restricted to a maximum of 25 attendees, non-private events to 50 attendees.

- The ban on large-scale events like festivals and larger concerts is extended until December 31.

- Violations of mask-wearing rules are fined with a minimum of 50 Euros.

- Any still existing Corona restrictions are kept in place for now and won't be lifted further.

These proposals are in parts already in place in some German states, but not nearly all of them. So, the idea is to extend them to the entire country.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Giving rising infection numbers in Berlin, the German federal and state governments are planning to pass country-wide coronavirus restrictions for the first time since early June. The federal government's proposal amounts to:

- Private parties are restricted to a maximum of 25 attendees, non-private events to 50 attendees.

- The ban on large-scale events like festivals and larger concerts is extended until December 31.

- Violations of mask-wearing rules are fined with a minimum of 50 Euros.

- Any still existing Corona restrictions are kept in place for now and won't be lifted further.

These proposals are in parts already in place in some German states, but not nearly all of them. So, the idea is to extend them to the entire country.

What the federal government and the states could ultimately agree upon out of these proposals were:

- Fines for not wearing masks when mandated (although Saxony-Anhalt chose to opt out of that today)

- Large-scale events remain banned until the end of the year.

Did I already mention that when it comes to coronavirus Germany resembles the EU?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Berlin's lowest court has ruled to allow tomorrow's anti-COVID restrictions protests to go forward. The Berlin Police has alreay appealed the decision. Even if the ruling is upheld the decision included a number of stipulations for the organizers of the protests like regularly making loudspeaker announcements urging attending protestors to practice physical distancing. If stipulations are not followed the police nominally has the authority to discontinue the protests anyway.

[Middle-aged Europe]

So I just went to observe to big, fat anti-COVID restrictions protest in Berlin. My primary take-aways from there:

- There was a lot of flag-waving going around. The most commonly seen flag seemed in fact to be the Black-White-Red flag of the German empire (1871-1918), also a widely used symbol of full-on neo-Nazis because the Swastika flag itself is outlawed around here, while the Black-White-Red had also been been used as Germany's official flag in concurrence with the Swastika for a transitional period between 1933 and 1935. The apparent ubiquity of that flag today surprised even me a bit. Didn't actually expect everything to be that right-wing.

- The second most commonly seen flag at the protests seemed to be the state flag of the Russian Federation. Go figure. This also included a guy with a Vladimir Putin t-shirt I had seen walking around.

- The third most common symbol was the "Q". Some people who had arrived to the protests in their car had the habit of donning a big, white "Q" symbol on their vehicles. There were even some comibinations with aforementioned symbols, for instance I also saw a woman protestor wearing a t-shirt with a big "Q" in the Black-White-Red colours of the empire.

- A few Trump fans were also waving an American flag, often in conurrence with the Russian flag or even the Black-White-Red one. In Germany, the Stars and Stripes seem to be increasingly becoming a symbol carried by Nazis as a result of the presidency of Donald Trump. But maybe this would change again with a Biden win in November.

- Another notable aspect was that there seemed to be significant age gap between protestors and counter-protestors. While anti-Corona restrictions protestors had an average age of about 50, pro-restrictions counter-protestors were more about 30. This seems to be line with the fact that Pegida and AfD in Germany as well as Trumpism in America is in large parts a rebellion of middle-aged white people against the system. Another feature distinguishing protestors and counter-protestors was that the former group was often mask-less, while the latter group usually wore a mask.

- I happened to come by at a corner were anti-Corona restrictions protestors and the Antifa was almost directly faced against each other. The mood was pretty aggressive there and I sometimes expected a brawl to start any second. But in the end, it limited itself to mutual shouting, insulting, and name-calling.


UPDATE: And I just read in the news that the police has officially dispersed the protests due to non-compliance with phyiscal distancing rules.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Demonstrations in Berlin continue to a degree, but I'm glad the police has stepped in. The court should never have ruled to allow the demonstration in the first place given in what kind of situation we find ourselves in. Many of the protesters are AfD-hacks and other deluded folks anyway. The most hilarious thing is these people complaining about "dictatorship" now. They have no clue what a dictatorship is actually like.

Well, I certainly get the point that banning such protests would only help to embolden them and radicalize them further. And of course, at this point this could very well be the strategy of right-wing extremists: Deliberately not wearing any masks and not keeping distance to fellow protestors so that such protests get banned and so that they can point out how awfully authoritarian everything has become.

However, I do agree that seeing a large-scale (40,000 people?) protest march against a alleged "Corona dictatorship" which primarily dons the flag of the old German empire and of Russia definitely exhibits a certain amount of cognitive dissonance and/or hypocrisy.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Epidemiologist-turned-politician Karl Lauterbach (SPD) - probably Germany's most prominent and most hated lockdown hardliner - has said that he's considering a second lockdown to be "unlikely" because by now we have sufficient alternative instruments at hand to trace and contain infections. If Lauterbach says that it probably means smooth sailing through the winter... yay.

[Middle-aged Europe]

No more than ten people from two households are allowed in said counties.

The restriction of ten people from two households is only applied to gatherings in private houses and appartments. It's a total of ten people irrespective of the number of households "in public"... public being everything that is not your house or appartment.

Strictly speaking, these restrictions aren't even officially in effect yet. At least not in Berlin where I live. State government meets next Tuesday and it will probably issue the ordinance then. The last such ordinance took effect the Saturday after.... that would mean October 24 in this case.

The current restrictions for Berlin are: 10 people max. indoors irrespective of how many households they come from, 5 people max. in public between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., no upper limit in public between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The judicial branch in Germany is in the process of slowing the government's new anti-Corona restrictions waaayyyyyy down. Yesterday, I think a couple of state-level courts had ruled that you can't ban hotels from accommodating guests from high-infection areas. Today, a court in Berlin has ruled that you can't order restaurants to close at 23 p.m. like it is currently the case in the capital.

[Middle-aged Europe]

According to a poll from today, support for the government's Corona restrictions in Germany has collapsed quite a bit, with both the "do not go far enough" and "go way too far" numbers having gone up. Polarization instead of consensus.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Angela Merkel and the heads of the sixteen German states have their next crisis meeting today. Merkel as a Corona hardliner is pushing for a month-long so-called "lockdown light" - which increasingly sounds like a real lockdown - in November. Aside from support she's receiving from states like Bavaria or NRW in this matter, there's also some resistance. Bodo Ramelow (Left), the minister-president of Thuringia, has in particular responded with a flat-out NO. The FDP is also highly criticial of the proposed restrctions although their opposition doesn't matter as much since they're not in the conference of the minister-presidents themselves (theoretically though they could try to further water down any decisions made today in the three states they're part of the government).

[Middle-aged Europe]

We seem to be developing a political split in Germany with CDU, SPD, and Greens generelly being the pro-lockdown parties and FDP, Left, and AfD being the anti-lockdown parties. As opposed to March/April were it was more like CDU/SPD/Greens/FDP/Left vs. AfD.

For instance, it's possible that yesterday's decisions will be watered down a bit again today in the state of Berlin, because the Left Party in Berlin - which is governing in a coalition with SPD and Greens here - is unhappy about the contents of the resolution.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Situation in Germany is that things seem to be stabilizing a bit, although they're still far from great. The federal government is already pushing to enact further restrictions, but some state government are pushing back, saying that we should put that discussion on halt for at least another week.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Germany

From December 1 to December 22: A maximum of five people from two households can meet (all children until 14 are exempted from this).

From December 23 to January 1: A maximum of ten people irrespective of the number of households can meet (all children until 14 are exempted from this).

So much for the theory. In reality, a number of states are deviating from this as they see fit. Less-affected states Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony-Anhalt have already announced to use looser rules than this.
COVID hotspot Berlin has adopted that first rule for December 1 to December 22 (except that children until 12 are exempted), but a stricter rule of a maximum of five people irrespective of the number of households for Christmas and New Year's Eve.