As for Germany, it’s super-mega-ultra high risk.
No risk, no fun.
Coronavirus digest: Germany designates all neighboring countries ‘high risk’ – Germany has put Austria on its travel warning list, meaning all of its neighbors are now designated high-risk. Meanwhile, several Latin American countries have reported record daily infections.
While the number of available intensive care beds continues to rise.
Almost makes you wonder if this latest variant isn’t all that dangerous (am I allowed to wonder that?). Hey, when in doubt (and your everyday, run-of-the-mill top health official apparently always is) just increase the panic level one more notch.
Germany: Omicron wave breaks new weekly cases record – The new wave of coronavirus infections in Germany has now surpassed numbers last seen in November. Experts are warning of the threat this poses to the unvaccinated.
Please? For health reasons? And then there’s COVID too.
Berlin Shortens Film Festival, Requires Vaccination and Testing – The 2022 Berlinale hopes new COVID-19 restrictions will allow it to have in-person screenings and events in February.
The Berlin International Film Festival has cut three days off its official screening schedule for 2022 and introduced new coronavirus measures, requiring attendees to be both fully vaccinated or recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection, plus show a recent negative COVID test.
Berlin 2022 will now run Feb. 10-16, with the festival’s Gold and Silver Bear honors handed out on Wednesday, Feb. 16. The final four days of the festival, Feb. 17-20, will feature repeat screenings of festival titles in cinemas around the German capital. Traditionally, Berlin sets aside one day for these “public screenings.”
Although scrambling now to change the numbers…
Germany’s Robert Koch Institute issued statistics on December 30 indicating that 96% of the latest Omicron patients were fully vaccinated, with only 4% unvaccinated.
Thank goodness the tweaking has really paid off for them. Sort of. Now they say: “It would seem the percentage of omicron cases among unvaccinated people accounted for 21%, not 4%.”
Now only 79% of the latest omicron patients were fully vaccinated. What a relief.
Rhymes with taxation.
Top German Government Official Previews Marijuana Legalization Plan Details – The new coalition government of Germany is unveiling some initial details about its marijuana legalization plan, even if the reform is taking a back seat to efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic…
Marijuana will also “be subject to some form of taxation, like other consumer products,” the minister said.
While the lawmakers emphasized that the objective of marijuana legalization is not to boost tax revenue for the country, FDP said in its election manifesto that taxing cannabis like cigarettes could generate €1 billion annually.
That means mandatory vaccination. And those signs down there read “for free vaccination decisions” and “no to mandatory vaccination.”
Tens of thousands of people are protesting against the latest restrictive COVID measures in German cities all over the country. And it’s fun to watch the state media squirm. They’re clearly finding it more and more difficult labelling these people wackos.
In Hamburg, some 13,700 people attended a demonstration against the restrictions, police said.
Under the banner, “Stop the corona dictatorship,” 4,000 protested in Düsseldorf.
Around 5,000 people rallied in Frankfurt, according to the police.
It’s brilliant, really. Or diabolical, if you prefer.
First create the current energy crisis by forcing the country to go down the ideological path to unreliable and unaffordable renewable energy, come what may, heavily burdening the German taxpayer, consumer and businessman in the process. Then promise aid to those most negatively affected by this crisis by burdening the German taxpayer, consumer and businessman even further. And still come out of it smelling like a rose. Aid here is just another nice word for taxation.
Germany’s soaring energy prices force government to promise aid – Headline inflation dips slightly, but energy costs still rising at double-digit pace.
In Bulgaria, actually. But still.
And more power to them.
A Community of German Anti-Vaxxers on the Black Sea Coast – A number of Germans have sought refuge on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast from what they view as dictatorial anti-coronavirus measures back home. It has developed into a kind of alternative reality for conspiracy theorists.
They came here to stay. Their cars with license plate numbers from the North Sea coast, Berlin and Bavaria are parked out in front of the Château Aheloy on the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. The apartment complex in the town of Aheloy is considered a stronghold of German-speaking corona truthers and so-called “Querdenker,” that hodgepodge of anti-government conspiracy theorists who have waged an ongoing campaign against all measures aimed at combatting the pandemic.
“For you, we’re all just tin foil-hat wearing yokel. You just want to shove us into a corner and stand us up against the wall.”
I mean, vaccinations. But I would go ahead and get tested if I were that cop.
COVID protester bites German police officer as marches spark violence – Police in Germany has reported sporadic violence at demonstrations against the country’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, with one protester in the eastern town of Lichtenstein biting an officer and another attempting to steal a service weapon.
Because the rest of Europe seems prepared to finally get rid of some out-dated Green ideological ballast. Time to bury an unshakeable, near-religious conviction that never had a place in the real world in the first place.
EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green – The European Union has drawn up plans to label some natural gas and nuclear energy projects as “green” investments after a year-long battle between governments over which investments are truly climate-friendly.
The European Commission is expected to propose rules in January deciding whether gas and nuclear projects will be included in the EU “sustainable finance taxonomy”.
This is a list of economic activities and the environmental criteria they must meet to be labelled as green investments.
By restricting the “green” label to truly climate-friendly projects, the system aims to make those investments more attractive to private capital, and stop “greenwashing”, where companies or investors overstate their eco-friendly credentials.
Observing Hermann 