I can’t help, I can not shake off the feeling of impending doom.
A beautiful day it was, the sky’s colour gradient changed from a pale whitish blue near the horizon to a full satisfying metallic blue right over me.
Unscratched by jet trails.
No aeroplanes.
A wonderful light, clear air, so damn cold that I wished I’d put on a thick pullover. The magnolia blossoms caught a cold and turned brown & limp, the cherry blossoms also have a brown tint, too early. All too early.
I looked at the numbers this afternoon (here, here, here ; no fear, I will not discuss them, as you know, venerated reader, I am “mathematically challenged”), but it seems we can assume that in Western Europe (in Germany at least) the curve, the total number of daily new infected persons, starts to flatten. What only means that the number of daily new infections may stabilise. If things go reasonably well, and our countermeasures work, this number may even go down. Sooner or later. Sadly, in Germany, later.
This says nothing about the mortality rate, of the number of dead humans. This number was astoundingly low in Germany, lingered around half a percent for the last weeks, but increased a bit lately, despite staying under one per cent. A leading expert told us today that this may change in the near future, simply because the composition of the group of infected persons will change. The virus may now reach more old and vulnerable people. What this means is shown in Wolfsburg, where within a few days 17 out of 165 inhabitants of a retirement home died from CoVid-19. A similar case happened here in Franconia last week, when quasi within two days twelve inhabitants of a care home died from the virus.
Germany “tests, tests, tests”, and processes five hundred thousand tests weekly. We have eight hospital beds per one thousand people (the UK & the US have less than three in total, according to these data from 2014). And despite the fact that the hospital & health care sector is understaffed & underfinanced, it still works. Emphasis is on still. We do take in patients from Italy and France – not only Northern Italy is hard hit, the situation in the French-German border region along the Rhine, the Elsaß, is very grave, too.
One does not have to be a seer to realise that the next group of victims are doctors & nurses.
What we will see is an increase of those who have been near infected persons. It takes now a week until the test is finalised and the result / outcome reaches the tested person. Until serious counter measures can take place. But the virus does not wait. This means that we have a bow wave of individuals who were exposed to the virus – family members, people working in any kind of care for the elderly, the disabled, and of course in hospitals. And. And. And.
This has the potential to make our house of cards crumble, fast. A vaccine is still at least twelve months away, all this talk about “herd immunity” is baseless rubbish. The German word is Durchseuchung. It means the (full) level of endemic infection. As i understand, it means that nearly all humans in a given population must have suffered through the virus infection, survive, and then may be immune. For some time being, at least. I think they talk about three quarters, 75 from hundred.
No one knows how high the mortality rate of this virus & the illness really is. The WHO estimated something around 3.5 %, if I remember it correctly, some months ago. A serious & reliable, robust, estimate is not feasible right now, it all would be guesswork. Does someone really want three to four per cent of three quarters’ population dead to reach “herd immunity” ? Take a calculator, please. (“Mathematically challenged” as I am, but this would amount to roughly two million dead Germans, starting with a population of eighty millions.) That would bring the fascist “survival of the fittest” to a whole new level, wouldn’t it ?
I think even that American idiot shies away from something like this. Remarkably, as I read today, this piece of wood that announced only weeks ago that the pandemic would simply go away, now tells the world that he’ll be doing a great job with “only” one hundred thousand dead.
100.000. Dead Humans. Conservative approach.
Great Job.
Cool.
There is no real translation for the German word Niedertracht.
Your only chance to come through this unharmed is to not get the infection. Its progression may be mild, uncomfortable & unpleasant at best. It may be deadly, especially if you are fifty+, and have some underlying condition. But young persons also die from it. It is, after all, a deadly lottery.
And so the restrictions will be in place for the coming weeks. No chance to do things different before the end of April, at least here in Bavaria, and Germany, and Europe.
And rightly so. We have to protect ourselves, and in doing so we protect our fellow humans.
And after all this, there shall be Sunday Music.
We hear a piece composed by Maurice RAVEL (Ger., Eng.), Miroirs (Ger., Eng.), II : Oiseuaux Tristes, performed by Jean-Yves THIBAUDET (Ger., Eng.). I hope you enjoy the music. Stay safe.
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