No customers, no purchases, no spend money, no make money, no business, no future.
‘No lines, no crowds’ — Germans stay home as stores begin to reopen after coronavirus lockdown – German consumers are counting their pennies rather than returning to shop in large numbers as stores gradually reopen after being locked down during the coronavirus crisis, the national retailers association said on Wednesday.
“Consumers are in a crisis mode, consumer sentiment is in the doldrums.”
And no Wiesn-Madl? Now we know this is getting serious, folks.
Germany cancels Oktoberfest beer festival due to coronavirus – Germany’s Oktoberfest, the world’s largest folk festival, where revellers from all over the world gather to swig large quantities of beer, has been cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis, the southern state of Bavaria said on Tuesday.
Endgültiges Aus für die Wiesn 2020!
A government program that’s easy to scam? Wow. That’s never happened before.
It’s not the government’s money in the end anyway so who cares, right? Money for nothing and the click’s for free.
The government of North Rhine-Westphalia, a province in western Germany, is believed to have lost tens of millions of euros after it failed to build a secure website for distributing coronavirus emergency aid funding.
The funds were lost following a classic phishing operation.
Cybercriminals created copies of an official website that the NRW Ministry of Economic Affairs had set up to distribute COVID-19 financial aid.
Crooks distributed links to their sites using email campaigns, lured users on the sites, and collected details from locals. They then filed requests for government aid on behalf of the real users but they replaced the bank account where funds were to be wired.
That means the mandatory wearing of face masks (Mundschutz actually means mouth protection in German).
Coming to your German neighborhood soon – as soon as the face masks the German government failed to hold ready in stock are available.
Then everybody can move on to the “new normalcy,” whatever that’s going to be. Anything’s better than the old normalcy, I suppose.
Zusammen mit Lockerungen der Corona-Beschränkungen – Mundschutz-Pflicht wird immer wahrscheinlicher.
And again and again and again.
In this episode we die of coronavirus. Stay tuned for the next one.
How Trump Is Fueling a Corona Disaster – Donald Trump’s disastrous crisis management has made the United States the new epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic. The country is facing an unprecedented economic crash. Are we witnessing the implosion of a superpower?
“German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. The reasons are psychological. The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.”
– Jan Fleischhauer (a German journalist who used to work for Der Spiegel itself)
PS: The quality of Spiegel journalism should never be placed in doubt.
Perhaps. But who cares? It’s politically incorrect. Angie says something else.
A virologist from the University of Bonn is using the hard-hit region of Heinsberg, Germany, as a living laboratory to study the coronavirus…
The death rate in the district is five times lower than what has been recorded by Johns Hopkins University as the national average, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.
Only 44 people — or 0.37% of people who lived in the district — have died from the disease…
Streeck went on to say that though the virus could “live” on various surfaces for up to seven days, he believed there was little chance that someone could become infected via surfaces, contradicting both the Center for Disease Control and National Institute of Health guidelines…
“There is no significant risk of catching the disease when you go shopping. Severe outbreaks of the infection were always a result of people being closer together over a longer period of time.”
Honestly, how long have we been hearing that it isn’t a question of “if” a pandemic is coming, it is only a question of “when?”
Well, then here’s yet another example of government planning in action because Germany was caught with its Lederhose down big time when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Take face masks. When not shipping off the few that they did have to China before realizing they needed them for themselves, or falsely accusing the United States of stealing face masks destined for them once the panic set in, Angela Merkel’s government spends a considerable amount of energy letting its state media outlets explain to the worried citizenry that face masks really aren’t that important anyway – while frantically trying to organize and produce them in the background.
So we all know what’s coming next. It’s right around the corner, folks. The German government will soon announce – once enough face masks are finally available – that although face masks are not absolutely, positively necessary to protect you during the pandemic you will nevertheless now be required to wear them any and every time you leave your apartment. But don’t thank us for being overly cautious like this, they will say, we only want to take every precaution necessary to keep you safe. They will soon want a pat on the back for not having done their job in the first place, in other words. A failure and a scam from start to finish. We’re here from the government and we’re here to help.
It’s now clear that the German government was ill-prepared for this pandemic, even though a 2012 risk analysis by the federal government sketched out a crisis scenario that is eerily similar to the current situation.
That means “Wild West methods.”
What it really means is US-Amerika sucks. As usual. Yawn. That the German on the street is anti-American while vehemently denying being anti-American is certainly nothing new but whenever German politicians openly spread fake news allegations about evil Amerikan intentions just to play to the crowd – and everybody bends over backwards not to notice afterward – that still surprises me.
In this case it was Berlin’s red-redder-green city government with Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) in the lead role.
When face masks for the Berlin police that were supposedly ordered in China and shipped over Thailand never arrived here Geisel ranted in a press statement that the Americans had confiscated them and redirected the shipment to the USA using their “wild west methods” in an act of “modern day piracy” and that the German federal government needed to take action here immediately. None of this ever happened, of course. Just as there will be no consequences for this guy now. Other than he’ll maybe get a raise. It’s a natural instinct, folks. It’s just what Germans and German politicians do.
Als angeblich in China bestellte, über Bangkok nach Berlin verfrachtete Schutzmasken für die Berliner Polizei nicht ankamen, wetterte Geisel in einer Presseerklärung: Die USA hätten die Ware für sich konfiszieren, umleiten lassen – „Wildwest-Methoden“ und „Akt moderner Piraterie“, wütete der Innensenator. Die Bundesregierung müsse eingreifen!
The means informer. Or snitch.
Snitching. It’s just what Germans do.
Law-abiding Germans are zealously helping police crack down on people flouting new social distancing rules aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus by reporting on strangers, neighbours and friends.
In a country where denunciation was commonplace under the Communists in East Germany and Hitler’s Nazis, police forces across the country are getting tip-offs on anything from “corona parties” to people driving to weekend cottages.
Das böse D-Wort – Der Begriff “Denunziant” erlebt in Zeiten von Covid-19 eine Wiedergeburt. Ist Deutschland durchsetzt von meldewütigen Hobbypolizisten?
You can run, Gerhard Schröder, but you can’t hide.
More and more people in Germany are voluntarily wearing face masks in public, as seen here with former chancellor Schröder and his partner.
Immer mehr Menschen in Deutschland tragen in der Öffentlichkeit freiwillig Schutzmasken. Wie hier Alt-Kanzler Schröder mit seiner Lebensgefährtin.
Observing Hermann 