In Germany. Ho, ho, ho, or something.
Coronavirus digest: Unvaccinated banned from some German Christmas markets – Hamburg has introduced tougher restrictions and Munich’s Christkindlmarkt has been ditched altogether. Meanwhile, Germany has recorded its highest ever daily caseload.
“It’s because I’m green, isn’t it?”
That means suspend.
Certification of controversial Russian gas pipeline suspended by Germany – The United States and Ukraine oppose Nord Stream 2, which was completed earlier this year but is not yet in operation.
Germany’s network regulator said Tuesday that it has suspended its procedure to certify the operator of a new pipeline that would bring Russian gas to the country under the Baltic Sea because of an issue with the company’s status under German law.
Die Bundesnetzagentur setzt ihr Verfahren zur Freigabe des Gastransports durch die Gaspipeline Nord Stream 2 vorläufig aus.
But some of them are wearing those red cardboard noses. Do they count?
The carnivals are being held despite the fact Germany is undergoing a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections, setting a record Wednesday for the number of daily infections.
And while the vaccine requirement was strictly enforced, the streets of Cologne were filled with people, side by side, without masks.
Thursday’s celebrations began with a somewhat ominous sign – designated so-called prince for the Cologne carnival, Sven Oleff, had tested positive for COVID-19 the previous day, a breakthrough case since he is fully vaccinated. The festival committee said he showed no symptoms and was feeling well.
The same reason every other country out there is ill-prepared – with the possible exception of China.
Nobody knows what they’re doing. The Germans just don’t know what they’re doing particularly well.
Why can’t Germany deal with the new COVID crisis?
Germany is deep into its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but yet again its authorities and politicians seem ill-prepared. Has no one learned from the mistakes?
It goes like this, if you haven’t noticed:
Laurel: Get vaccinated to protect others.
Hardy: OK. Got vaccinated.
Laurel: And keep wearing a mask to protect others.
Hardy: But I got vaccinated.
Laurel: The vaccinated are just as contagious as the unvaccinated.
Hardy: Then why did I get vaccinated?
Laurel: To protect others.
Is that all?
In the 1980s, he began collecting postcards, posters, leaflets, coins, newspapers, magazines, documents, stickers, figurines, photographs and films that testify to anti-Jewish sentiment with the express purpose of making them available to museums and archives as educational tools. He invested an estimated €1m in his collection, which includes an array of posters relating to the Dreyfus Affair, the armbands, diaries, passports and drawings of Jewish people imprisoned in concentration camps, and advertising material for the infamous antisemitic Nazi propaganda film Jud Süss (1940).
The collection “will help us and our visitors reach a deeper understanding of how widespread antisemitic views, images and hate propaganda were in Germany and other European countries from the middle of the 19th century,” says Raphael Gross, the director of the German Historical Museum.
That means compulsory vaccination.
And that’s what most Germans want for Germany, believe it or not. Of course, most Germans have always wanted lots of things for Germany in the past that didn’t, well, work out quite so well. But still.
‘Grave concern’ over Covid in Europe as German cases soar – The World Health Organization expressed “grave concern” Thursday over the rising pace of coronavirus infections in Europe, as Germany registered its biggest daily increase since the start of the pandemic…
Alarm bells were ringing especially in Germany, the European Union’s most populous country, where the number of new cases over the past 24 hours soared to almost 34,000 on Thursday — an all-time high, according to the Robert Koch Institute health agency.
I guess you have to live here for a while to get it.
If German bureaucracy gets all up in your face when trying to get some commonplace document, as it does, then it’s certainly going to ruin your day (year? life?) when you try to build a gigafactory.
Tesla’s Elon Musk bemoans German red tape, again – Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk took to Twitter to bemoan a consultation process launched on Tuesday for local citizens to express objections to a huge factory he is building near Berlin.
The process, being repeated over concerns the first time around did not comply with regulations, is a snag in Tesla’s plans to start production of electric cars this month.
“Sigh.”
Maybe this latest climate conference will finally “save the planet” for once already. Maybe. Try 26 and counting.
Or maybe fewer and fewer doomed planet dwellers are interested in taking part in this mass psychosis* anymore. Maybe. Nah. There’s certainly no maybe about that.
How the Worst Can (Maybe) Still Be Averted – The Glasgow climate summit could be the key to limiting the damage of climate change, but its success will depend on the host country’s ability to bring guest nations together – and on the willingness of China and the U.S. to overcome their deepening rivalry.
*A mass psychosis is an epidemic of madness and it occurs when a large portion of a society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.
That means vaccine centers.
And Germany needs to reopen them again. You have to ask yourself why they closed them down in the first place. It looks like with the need for COVID-19 booster shot after booster shot after booster shot they will be needing them for many, many years to come.
Germany’s outgoing health minister is calling on state governments to reactivate some specialized COVID-19 vaccination centers that were closed in the late summer to help administer booster shots as new coronavirus infections increase rapidly.
Now serving language grievance number 731!
“Once you start addressing the third gender, it’s not long until you’re required to address a fourth or fifth and, for me as a lawyer, this gets too complex linguistically.”
Too complex linguistically? It’s too complex mentally already. Leave the German language alone. Please.
Germany debates how to form gender-neutral words out of its gendered language – How do you pronounce a word with an asterisk or a colon in the middle?
“Legal texts are not there to serve such grievances. There are more important issues in this world.”
Observing Hermann 