Covid 19 - Updates from your zones

[Mirasol]

Oh no! My condolences midwestmutt and sister! And to you as well, Annuil!
So many people dying... Ugggh, I just hope this whole thing passes soon!

Stand Still, Stay Silent behind your mask and may the virus pass without noticing you

Well said!

[Yastreb]

I went to the dentist today, and she ran through a lengthy checklist of questions about signs and symptoms; she also was very careful when I removed my mask, even enclosing it in plastic and putting it to one side before the checkup began.

Over the last few days, I've noticed that the airways are still almost empty. Apart from helicopters, the only aircraft have been short-haul turboprops (Fairchild Metroliner, SAAB 340 and the like). Even with the easing of state border restrictions, there's apparently little call for passenger flights.

[Róisín]

Yastreb, I hope the dentist wasn’t too awful. Hopefully things will keep getting better!

[Mirasol]

Germany is going back into hard lockdown starting Wednesday, 16.12., with everything closing except for shops that sell "things for daily needs". Giving out Alcohol in public spaces is forbidden, so is selling firework for New Year´s Eve. For now this should last until 10.1.2021. But contact-restrictions are partly lifted over Christmas, so people can celebrate. Because that is definitly a good idea...

Before we had "light lockdown", which basically ment life as normal with less contacts, more mask-rules and restaurants and entertainment-businesses closed. It stopped the second wave from growing exponentially, but ultimately didn´t prevent cases passing the critical amount for our health system. So this is what´s happening now.

[JoB]

Germany is going back into hard lockdown starting Wednesday, 16.12., with [various measures]

... but no coordinated say on curfews. So, when I make the trip back from France on the 16th (a solid 12h at the steering wheel), I'm subject to

• a requirement to preregister my arrival in Germany,
• a 20:00-06:00 curfew within France,
• a 20:00-05:00 curfew if I pass through Baden-Württemberg,
• apparently no curfew while passing through Saarland and/or Rheinland-Pfalz, but
• once I arrive in Nordrhein-Westfalen, there is neither a curfew nor a requirement to quarantine (which IIUC is what the preregistration was originally meant to help enforce) because nobody has taken any further action yet after the OVG Münster court ruling overthrowing the NRW Einreiseverordnung.

... yay?

[Grade E cat]

Need to cross a lot of borders, I gather? I don't think I had picked up on that part of your life, outside of periodic displays of knowledge of our bureaucracy. I can see how it can get confusing and frustrating when neighboring countries have different rules. What trips me off is changes in rules happening in the middle of the work week. Something changing between the weekend and a traditional workday (or even Saturday and Sunday) feels more normal than something changing between two workdays.

[moredhel]

What trips me off is changes in rules happening in the middle of the work week. Something changing between the weekend and a traditional workday (or even Saturday and Sunday) feels more normal than something changing between two workdays.

Our governments here have waited too long and our hospitals are full. Every day earlier is better. Because of the federal structure of germany the is not one person in charge who decides to start it tomorrow. There are at least 17 people in charge. Starting 16. 12. ist very fast.

[wavewright62]

Drive safely, JoB, and may you all have a safer season.   

[JoB]

Need to cross a lot of borders, I gather?

Umh, no? Just one national border (from France into Germany, going through Benelux would complicate things even more) and I don't go to France particularly often, but when I do, it's for family reasons and if the date set turns out to be "a bad choice", it usually isn't a choice of mine in the first place.

Drive safely, JoB

Thanks, but I don't think that the driving will be the particularly risky part of the trip this time ...

(And I'd like to put it on record that I do not fully agree with a distant relative who once said that "the only way to drive safely in France(*) is a Sherman tank with a diplomatic license plate".
(*) Actually, he meant Paris, though.)

[Yastreb]

South Korea has been struck by a third wave of COVID-19 infections, with more than 1,000 cases reported on Sunday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-14/south-korea-covid-19-emergency-third-wave-record-cases/12979910

A third wave? That's a very bad sign.

[JoB]

• a requirement to preregister my arrival in Germany,
• [...]
• once I arrive in Nordrhein-Westfalen, there is neither a curfew nor a requirement to quarantine

Updates ...

• The RKI (which operates (part of?) the preregistration website) refers to state legislation to check "for details", but won't have anything about NRW saying "no quarantine". So, I currently don't have the slightest whether I'm officially (but tacitly) quarantined or not; will have to read the full text of the act making the preregistration mandatory to figure it out myself.
• Once more, I find that German healthcare is pretty much inoperational in late December, if "helped" by the pandemic. In order to get a second (domestic) opinion on that broken hand, I'd have to physically visit my GP, get referred to a specialist, find one, make an appointment, and then visit him - oh, you're in home quarantine? Call again after that. (At which point the bone will already have fused back together 20° crooked, which the French doctors deem OK. Note that I have all relevant medical documents at hand in electronic form, it's just the administrative/insurance part that necessitates juggling a paper form and a chipcard between the doctors' offices.)
• Things you don't want to read posted in the staircase when returning home in the evening to immediately quarantine yourself: "Due to repairs, the building's tap water will be turned off first thing tomorrow morning." (Only for half a day, luckily.)

[Grade E cat]

There's apparently a new strain of Covid that's more contagious in the UK. If it made it to the contient, chances are that France is involved in some way.

Also, is a there an achievement for "presidents of both countries for which you have a passport have tested positive"?

[Gwenno]

There's apparently a new strain of Covid that's more contagious in the UK. If it made it to the contient, chances are that France is involved in some way.

Also, is a there an achievement for "presidents of both countries for which you have a passport have tested positive"?

Yeah, we've gone full lockdown here again because of it, and a lot of people are upset because of the last minute disruption to their Christmas plans. I understand why they're upset, but I hope people keep to the rules regardless and we can lower the number of cases. I think most people know people who've caught it at this point, there's just been so many cases, even living as rurally as I do!

[Grade E cat]

It's pretty much a "the only plot twist is that it didn't happen sooner" situation, but the more contagious mutant was found in France.

[JoB]

It's pretty much a "the only plot twist is that it didn't happen sooner" situation, but more the contagious mutant was found in France.

I considered "hopefully we can keep the 'UK mutation' off the continent proper" a failure when Denmark reported ~30 cases all over the country ...

(When was that again? On 21-Dec-2020, the official count was still at nine ...)

Not too surprising, though, considering that sightings of the N501Y mutation go back to April (in Brazil) ...