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Germany really is doing the worst possible version of lockdown right now — where it doesn’t work, the rules change every two weeks, and the moral panics are all about outdoor socializing and social contacts and not WORK and SCHOOL.
I know so many people who could be doing home office right now who are being forced to go into offices. So many kids in school rooms. Every week another outbreak at a care home or a meat factory. And we’re still panicking about antimaskers and Drunk Youths.
The people in power have made a calculated decision to keep work open in person (and keep schools open so parents can go to work), more people keep getting sick and dying because of it, and they’re blaming mulled wine stands. It’s really something.
And still, eight months in, not a word of risk management advice. Nothing about how to live with this long term. How to see some people less often. How to form a pod.
Just: work, spend, stay home, and if you take a walk with someone you’re antisocial.
Just: work, spend, stay home, and if you take a walk with someone you’re antisocial.
This is all a machine for deaths and also a machine for the production of conspiracy theorists, who will find the following kernel of truth at the heart of their insane, hateful conspiracy:
If it’s safe for me to work in an office or shop with 30 people, why not dinner with 5?
If it’s safe for me to work in an office or shop with 30 people, why not dinner with 5?
In ten months in South Korea, 556 people have died (h/t @FabiusMayland). This is what a scientific response to the pandemic, without authoritarian or draconian measures, in a free society, looks like.
It is not, as people have helpfully pointed out, the worst possible version. There are places doing worse. And places where the response has been more authoritarian, involved more state violence, and more explicit targeting of migrants. But it is not good!
