Country: Germany
Continent: Europe
Governing Party:++ Christian Democratic Union
Political affiliation: Centre Left?
Main crisis leaders:++ Angela Merkel (Chancellor), Jens Spahn (Minister of Health), Horst Seehofer (Minister of the Interior)
Status of country: Republic
Cases (at time of lockdown:* 1200+
Deaths (at time of lockdown) 2
Cases (at time of writing):** 29,308,100 (yeah: just shy of thirty MILLION!)
Deaths (at time of writing): 142,139
Date of first lockdown: March 16
Duration: 76 days
Number of lockdowns (to date): 2
Reaction level+++: 50
Vaccine uptake (at time of writing): 76%
Score:*** 20
Oh here we go. America could have kicked the virus’s arse, had there been someone competent in charge, yes? If the US had had a man - or woman - in the White House who actually listened to the science and didn’t try to pretend the virus didn’t exist, they would be in a far different and likely better place than they are today. So Germany, Europe’s powerhouse leader and pretty much the equivalent of the US on the continent, should have been leading the field, driving lockdowns, vaccine production, protecting its citizens, yes? Should have been a breeze to them. But wait! What’s that I see? Almost thirty
million cases? How did that happen? Look! Germany even had the Infection Protection Act, which gave the country’s government wide-ranging powers to tackle a virus outbreak. This should have been a slam dunk. What went wrong?
Well…
Germany’s first recorded case seems to have come on February 25, and who would like to guess where the gentleman had just spent his holidays? A day later, two people related to him also came down with the virus, as did others who had recently returned from Italy. Okay, hold on: this article is doing its cases by state, so I have to correct that. That guy on Feb 25 was not the first, just the first in that state. Pays to read ahead, Trollheart you dummy! Right, let’s scan, people. Okay, so, to redress that error: the first case was actually in January, in Bavaria, and is interesting. Despite my snide comment above, this man did
not visit Italy; China was his undoing, but he had not been there. His colleague had, but she had caught the virus from her parents, whom she had met in Shanghai, and who had come from the very epicentre, ground zero, Wuhan.
Right, it’s too confusing to try to do a timeline for the number of cases, with all these states treated separately, so let’s leave that for now. There were certainly in the region of at least 100 by the end of February, that much I have been able to add up, but then, I don’t know if that article is only taking representative states and maybe there are others which aren’t reported on, but which had cases. It seems though that Germany, like its neighbour the Netherlands, initially shrugged at Covid-19 and did not believe it to be a threat; no travel restrictions were considered or implemented in January. I guess the people didn’t have the same sort of faith in their government, and by the close of January there wasn’t a mask to be got in Germany. Again, pretty amazingly, the main concern of the government as January gave way to February was the possible stigmatisation of those who had been infected, that they might be excluded from society. I mean, come on! There’s taking liberal socialism too far, isn’t there?
Two weeks in and Germany was indeed emulating its huge corpulent brother across the great ocean, and dismissing the pandemic; they voted against the restriction of travel to or from China, believing it xenophobic. Ah, those Germans! How easily they forget. Sorry. The madness continued. With not a mask to be bought for love or money in Germany, they decided to export over 8 tons of PPE to… China. This was in fact in addition to a previous consignment of 5 tons already sent. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
“Why can’t we buy masks, gloves and shields, sir?”
“Oh, we sent them all to China.”
“But… but didn’t they start this whole thing?”
“Well yes, but we Germans don’t need that sort of stuff. Coronavirus isn’t contagious. We’ll be fine.”
Gott in Himmel! Incredibly, by March, when many other countries were considering lockdowns, Germany persisted in keeping its borders open, running social and sporting events, keeping people at work and refused to limit flights, describing such action as “inappropriate”. Just to add to the rampant stupidity or blindness, they sent another few ton of medical supplies out of the country, this time bound for Iran. Where, as we saw in the previous post, they were most likely taken by government officials and sold on the black market or hoarded for their own personal use. Nice one, Angela! I’m reminded of the ending of the
Fawlty Towers episode “The Germans,” where, having witnessed the chaos in Fawlty Towers, a bewildered German looks to the camera and delivers the final line: “How did they ever win?” Well, I’m now thinking how did these people ever secure all of Western Europe and hold it for nearly five years?
To their utter surprise, the day after a large consignment of medical gear had headed out to the Islamist Republic of Iran, German facilities began complaining they hadn’t enough medical equipment to handle their own Covid cases. Well, duh! The next day a prohibition order went out, stopping any future export of medical goods. I wonder could they hear the horse galloping over the fields and the barn door banging in the wind? Jesus wept. So, too, most likely, did the German patients waiting to be seen to. Even more incredibly, at this point Health Minister Spahn was STILL going on about “fear being worse than the virus”. Well no you stupid fu
cker, it was
not. Fear doesn’t generally kill people in their thousands, while the virus does. I begin to run out of expletives for how stupid these people are coming across as being. Master race my arse!
Hold the phone there! Two of the smaller parties actually
praised the government for their handling of the crisis? Did I read that - yeah, I read that right. The radical right-wing party AdF disagreed, and while I’m loath to share any common ground with the far right, I have to admit that, based on what I’ve read here, they were on the money and were possibly one of the only ones with the balls to speak against the government. I’m sure they were nutcases who wanted to burn the Reichstag or whatever, but at least they were truthful nutcases. Israel must have surely taken some sneaking pleasure in declaring a quarantine on all German travellers arriving in their country, but it was of course the right thing to do. Well, no: the right thing to have done would have been to have banned them entering Israel, but they didn’t go that far.
Denial seems to have been the watchword in Germany. Even into the first week in March the people were still being told not to worry, this was nothing, it would all pass. Trump must have been taking notes (or sending them), although he probably would not have approved the very important measure the Germans took of banning prostitution for the duration of the crisis. On March 9, with cases standing at 1,200, the first two deaths from the virus were announced. Merkel still refused to instigate any sort of lockdown, or restrict travel. Truth to tell, the Chancellor had been conspicuous by her absence during the previous months, so I guess the running of the crisis management - if it can be called that, with extreme generosity - must have been Spahn. As could only be expected in a country taking pretty much no precautions, and leaving it up to individuals to protect themselves (while still throwing out contradictory advice such as not to bother with disinfectants, those who showed no symptoms should not be temperature tested and so on) members of the German parliament soon got the virus, then Trump blindsided Merkel by banning travel from Germany to the USA on March 12. Germany had not been consulted.
The next day almost all of the federal states in Germany (14 of 16) told Merkel to go fu
ck herself and closed all their schools. The German Bundesliga (German soccer association) suspended all matches till at least April, to the dismay of the Mayor of Berlin, who had arrogantly claimed the big match between Bayern Munich and Union Berlin would go ahead, with full spectators, the next day. Leaving Germany to it, Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark closed their borders. Germany was left scrambling for ventilators and other important medical equipment it had already sent to China and Iran. With 4,500 cases and nine dead, Germany finally got it and went into lockdown on March 16, closing their borders as Italy screamed “Don’t end up like us! This thing is real, and it’s killing us!” The next day the entire European Union closed its borders to any travel from outside of Europe for thirty days, and advised (but did not prohibit) Europeans from travelling. Somehow, incredibly, through I guess some legal loophole, flights still arrived and passengers were allowed in from… China and Iran. Jesus.
Hospitals were by now of course facing a shortage of PPE, while it was reported that 80% of GPs had none. Evidence emerged that a manufacturer of masks had warned in early February of shortages, but had been ignored. German health officials twisted and turned, trying to shift the blame. Curfews began to be imposed by various states, unrest and riots broke out, and panic buying ensued, as it always would. Volkswagen bought medical equipment from China (which could have been originally some of the consignment Germany sent them, if you think about it) and donated it to the German efforts to fight the virus. In a comically tragic episode, six million German-manufactured masks, which for some reason, never explained, were in Kenya, were half-inched and never got to their destination. Germany was now begging China for masks, reversing the role they had played when they had been so sure that the virus was nothing to worry about that they could send the PPE off to China. Bet they wished they had kept them at home!
As they stubbornly and pig-headedly charged with eyes wide open towards disaster, Germany still refused to cancel school exams, declaring they would go ahead on March 25. The Robert Koch Institute, a voice crying unheard in the wilderness, continued to make dire - and as it turned out of course, accurate and true - predictions of how bad this was going to get, and convince the government to take it more seriously. Which they did not. Some took perhaps the easy way out: on March 28 the body of Hesse’s Finance Minister, Thomas Schäfer was discovered near a railway line; clearly the pressure had been too much for him and he had taken his own life. Amazingly, it took till almost April before any sort of mask mandate went in place, and that only happened in certain states. Of course, there being no masks for even hospitals might have had something to do with this; not much point rushing out to buy a mask only to be told there are none to be had. Borders began to open from May 13, with full access to be allowed by June 15.