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German and Austrian Culture and Words ( to run away but also having fun with it before )

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OK, but in the meantime, we all know so many persons in all the governments all around the world who came into their jobs as perfect amateurs and they even perfectioned "amateurship" in their jobs. So, they are thinking when this works so good in my job, why not in other jobs, too?

I do not really know why but I suddenly remember again some old German advertising for our "Yellow Pages" (= "Gelbe Seiten"), when they were still a "book with the addresses of professionals".
Maybe, it was not so good that they do not really exist as a "book" any more in internet times.

This could be reality today about "how to find a plumber (or a truck driver) ? :


"Better you have looked for someone who is a professional in doing his job" :


Et cetera:


 
My mother will hopefully become 90 years old in springtime next year and although her memory is constantly becoming weaker and slower, she remembers a lot of tunes and music from her childhood. When speaking to her on telephone because she is living in a really well organized retirement home, she often asks me if I could find this or that song and she is often surprised and delighted that I can do that within less than one minute and play it on the telephone for her.

Some of these tunes are really unknown for me and she must have heard them in her own childhood without ever having told me about them before but I really can find them what surprises even me. Other examples are not really the songs I would love to play on my own birthday but they are very beautiful nevertheless and I am sometimes glad that I must have inherited so much of good taste from my mother.

Here are some examples from her wishlist of the last days and I think, the readers here will usually like them, too:

"La Montanara" sung in Italian and German with pictures from the autonomous Italian-Austrian region of Trentino - South Tyrol (= "Süd-Tirol"), in which the cultures of Italy and Austria mixed in language, architecture and music. This version is special for me, too, because of the two languages and an unusual beautiful kind of slow yodelling which you usually only hear much faster:




And again, I am impressed by the remaining memories of my mother and her outstanding taste. It is sad that these memories - that all our memories - will one day disappear in time if we do not tell someone about them.

For example, my mother yesterday remembered a serial of entertaining programs from the early 1970's, which I only had very dark in my memories like a fairy-tale from very old times.
"Once upon a time", there was a German opera singer with the name "Anneliese Rothenberger" who always appeared on screen and on stage like a countess or a baroness and she had something like a natural nobility and at the same time a cordial friendliness that you really wondered why she had no "von" in her name:


Even the name of her musical program on German TV in the early 1970s sounded like from an old aristocratic time:

"Anneliese Rothenberger gibt sich die Ehre"
(the meaning is most probably best translated by = "Anneliese Rothenberger does to her friends and to herself the honor to have a common meeting")

She usually invited the best German and also international classical singers of operas and operettas but also the last living composers of opera / operetta songs from Germany and Austria who sometimes composed songs which became so famous still during their lifetimes that most Germans thought, this must be an old German "Volkslied" from the times of Goethe or Schiller, but they sometimes were written just before WW I or between WW I and WW II.

And here is an almost historical part of her TV show from Christmas 1971, in which the Austrian composer Robert Stolz is 91 years old ...


... and playing the piano for the German opera singer Hermann Prey, who sings a song by Robert Stolz himself, of which almost all Germans at that time already thought, this is an old German "Volkslied". But no, it was a composition by Robert Stolz who is there still alive and playing his own composition for the singer Hermann Prey ...


... (and my mother remembered this TV show just yesterday - and almost incredible for me today!).



Then, she wanted me to find this German "Volkslied", which was indeed written and composed by members of the German-speaking minority of the "Siebenbürger Sachsen" in Romania - and my mother once belonged to them.
(By the way and please do not forget, their settlement area once was Hungary and when the first of them came to Siebenbürgen/ Transsilvania in 1176 [!] they were tributary only to the king of Hungary and to no one else, so they had their own cities, their own seven castles (= 7 Burgen => Sieben Bürgen) and kept their German language for more than 700 years.) So, this is a German choir from Kronstadt = Brasov in today's Romania, singing a romantic and rather sad love song:


And finally, just to show how "noble" the Germans once still were clothed during celebrations in the 1970's, a New Year's Eve 1979 / 1980 - TV show with some special guests from other countries, here "Baccara" with a very special performance and a sexy surprise during the last 2 minutes.
(Wouldn't you like to go back to those times in a time machine, too? What a time that was: ABBA, Baccara and so many other musical - today legendary - artists from other countries live on German TV almost every week! Wow!)

 
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Yesterday, there was in Germany the 31st celebration day of German Unity and there were a lot of newspaper articles and TV reports how the European history developped since 1989 / 1990 for us Germans. I had a lot of spare time and read and saw a lot of them. All in all, I think, for the last 31 years - or even 76 years - we Germans had an incredible amount of luck compared to many other countries in this world. Other countries with a similar history are still separated or want to stay separated as long as their systems are not really "compatible" and still on the brink of a war - I am just thinking of Korea or Taiwan.

But as you might have already seen from me, I like the German articles the most which are "a bit satirical" or "funny controversial" and in this sense, you find much more in left-orientated newspapers than in conservative ones. By the way, comedy and satire in Germany are almost always "left-orientated" and there is only one exception: German carnival is the only case I know in Germany with sometimes conservative-orientated satires.

In any case, there was an article which I found so funny that I translated it for you by the help of the Google Translator into English because this article deals with the German problems of young parents giving very unusual names to their children. It is even the more funny for me because you find in this article incredible combinations depending on the immigration of people from very different cultures marrying in Germany and thinking about what names could be given for their children. And all of this article in one of "the most leftist newspapers" in Germany. I must admit, the level of funny nonsense is the highest on the left side of the political spectrum in Germany.

It is this article from this newspaper's satirical "edge" of the name "Die Wahrheit" = "The Truth" with the Google translation down below. Have fun! :roflmao:


The truth: Lucifer howls on the slide

Completely new old names for children are now the hip trend in the name stronghold of Berlin. There is a lot to do for the registry offices.

The toddler comes down the sloping footpath with his scooter at hell's speed, just manages to get around the curve and, laughing, whizzes past Bernd Müller very close. The father, who strolls behind at a distance, casually calls after his child: "Lucifer, not so fast!"

Bernd Müller pulls out pen and notepad - he is a registrar in Prenzlauer Berg and Berlin's leading name researcher. He is passionately interested in historical developments and current trends in naming. Are we in the process of the birth of a new trend? We ask him as we sit on the edge of a nearby playground. Müller is a frequent visitor to playgrounds - not only because of his two own children.

How might the name for the mad Lucifer have been found? Did the future parents sit in their 6-room apartment in an old building and couldn't agree on a name? She is heavily pregnant, he is too young to be a dad at 47, she is from Lebanon, he is from Stuttgart, and then the question arises: what do we call it? Rosa-Lila Schmälzle (=Pink-purple pecking) after the father, when it’s a girl? Zarathustra al Merhabi, when it’s a boy, after the mother? And then the registrar rejects the first choice of name Satan-Sebastian, then? Now the little one is called Lucifer-Leonhard.

The casual strolling father doesn't look like a Satanist. Not even like a Gothic fanatic. He wears sandals with socks, short khaki pants, a bland polo shirt and an equally bland face with a little beard in it. All in all more ugly as hell than evil as hell.

Archangel nosedive

But why shouldn't a child be called Lucifer? The original was once an angel, Lucifer, the lightbringer. And don't parents always say: You are my star, my light, my sunshine? Michael and Gabriel are also called children, and they were archangels.

Studies have shown, explains the 45-year-old, well-tanned administrative officer Müller, that first names do not influence the person being called, but their surroundings. A Kevin might be good at chemistry, but bad at math, and as Hans-Hermann he would shine in ancient Greek and play the transverse flute. But a Lucifer is forever branded as evil and his whole school class is dragged into ruin. And there the children of class 2b will still be able to speak of luck to have got Corona and not the plague.

Is the fashion of old-fashioned retro names over now? No more Paul, no Hans, no more Gertrud and Elisabeth? Are more archaic names flooding the kindergartens? And what is the name of Lucifer's brother?

Adonai? - "Adonai. Don't push Gilgamesh, ”it probably resounds over the playground where Bernd Müller will be sitting tomorrow afternoon. Zeus is digging, Athene is sitting on top of the slide and does not dare to go down and Ares has just got the swing on his head and is crying. Perhaps it will also be the migrants who have moved here who give their children Germanic names in order to integrate better. No longer Mohammed, but Odin.

“Or Loki,” says Bernd Müller. “Loki Özdemir. I had it on my desk the other day before. However, it was a girl named after the wife of former Chancellor Schmidt - Loki, not Özdemir. "

But be careful, the names shouldn't be too Germanic either, warns Bernd Müller. “Anyone who baptizes their child „Adolf“ receives a visit from the youth welfare office AND from the German Secret Service for the Protection of the Constitution (= "Bundesverfassungsschutz"!) the next day so that they can be recruited as undercover agents in good time. Heinz is already called a ketchup, which causes problems with trademark protection. Only sadists call their child Rumpelstiltskin, and it is to be feared that no one will be able to remember the name."

Name on edible paper

“I recently had a couple of parents who gave their child a name that they are not allowed to pronounce for religious reasons. Or tell someone. It was written down for me on a piece of edible paper, and after I had entered the name, I had to blacken it with a thick organic marker and then erase it. "

On paper, names usually look harmless, says Bernd Müller. It becomes critical when the name is belittled. "When the Swabians still have a continuous '-le' on them: 'Zeusle, give the Beelzebüble its shape again' ... Then I will move to Hamburg, fortunately the children still get there traditional fish names or are named after meteorological low-pressure areas," says Müller .

"Luzie", we hear the father a few meters behind us. "Drive slowly. Luzie, do you hear? "

"It's a shame," says Müller, crosses something out in his notebook and looks at the clock, then he says goodbye. He now has to go to the Kita (= a special German "Kindergarten" for the whole day) to pick up his children Sauron and Cthulhu.
:eek:
 
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By the way and I just remembered:
Is there not a little "Lucifer" in all of us? This theme by the Alan Parsons Project was - and I think, it still is - also the musical intro theme of the regular German investigative journalism TV report "MONITOR":


Mhm ... the points on the veils of the ladies in the picture of this album ... are these points really what I am afraid of seeing there?
 
haha

the number of words that make it from German to English is much much smaller than vice versa but this one deserves it ...

View attachment 1073588
... and what were they talking about? Just asking because I always love to feel a bit of "fremdschämen" for someone else.
I remember several politicians for whom I always had this lovely sado-masochistic mix of "fremdschämen" and "Schadenfreude" ...

:rolleyes: ;)

:nusee:
 
By the way: Exceptions seem to be the new normal reality in Europe.
Concerning the weather, it was again a bit windy and rainy in France, the BeNeLux-States and in Germany.
The pictures in the news showed that nature often likes to come a bit closer in our time and some human constructions looked like modern arts:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h20m31s_001_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h21m30s_003_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h25m53s_009_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h23m52s_006_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h23m15s_005_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h22m09s_004_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h26m28s_010_.jpg

Except some injured drivers, no one was severely hurt because there were enough of warnings and closures. For example, the place in front of the cathedral of Cologne was closed because of the danger of "Steinschlag" (= "falling rocks"). Usually, you see a warning of "Steinschlag" only in the mountain regions like the Alps:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h25m26s_008_.jpg It was also a bit windy in the Netherlands: Ashampoo_Snap_2021.10.21_22h24m45s_007_.jpg

And the governments of some countries in Europe are again thinking about a new Covid-19 - lockdown or already doing it: Russia, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia etc. ...
In some of these countries, the people are still underestimating this virus and the most doctors there are in a mood close to despair.
Even in Germany, there are people who "must" go to re-opened discos (-> at least 200 new infections in Berlin in one night!), they "must" travel into other countries "just for fun" and so on.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), "Pensées"
 
This is the Halloween night also in Germany 9 o'clock in the evening and I really hear right now some witches storming and raging around the houses in my neighbourhood.
(OK, some older German people without phantasy call them teenage hooligans and their wild girls, but when you would hear them right now doing nonsense in this night, you could easily think, they are witches and their male magicians.)

In any case, they sometimes have their music equipment with them and they are playing German songs or songs turned into German like the following ones in my region here in Germany:

This one was turned into German (you remember it in English?) and it was said to have been also a favourite song of German soldiers in Afghanistan during the last years with some Viking connotations (=> "We will all meet / see us again in Walhalla!") :



There are also some "Medieval Rock" (?) - bands and songs by them in German, sometimes they meet and mix their songs for new versions:






Other songs are even made in English by them:

 
Concerning Covid-19 in Europe, you can see again how my hope for intelligent human life on this planet is fading and in the meantime, I regard all of human history like the Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon: Life with human beings is too serious and too much endangered not to laugh about it and satire is the only way not to become crazy.

For example, in Germany and in some other European countries, some of the first vaccinated people were "so happy" about that they posted pictures of their certifications on social media, visible for all visitors of their accounts.
This was the way how criminal counterfeiters and forgers got the idea and the charge numbers of the vaccinations and how to make money with it.

Now, there are so many fake certifications in central Europe that even the counterfeiters are joking about it.

In Italy, there are even faked digital certifications in circulation of historical persons you would not like to be remembered of, for example the Italian Covid-19 vaccination certification of Adolf Hitler and according to this German satire "heute-show", it is indeed still valid on German smartphones and various German systems:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h21m26s_012_.jpgAshampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h21m56s_013_.jpgAshampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h22m29s_014_.jpg

This certainly means a moral dilemma for German Neo-Nazis, who are usually against this vaccination because of the possibility of alien or "Capitalist-American-Jewish-Bill-Gates"-ingredients or these Neo-Nazis think, this vaccination is just a fake in order to establish an international European-Jewish-American-Russian-Dictatorship on us poor Germans.
Their dilemma now is that Adolf Hitler is obviously still alive, obviously living in Italy, AND: he is already vaccinated !
This is not easy to explain for German Neo-Nazis!

Moreover, in Germany, it is almost impossible to punish the persons for faking vaccination certifications because there is no law for this YET. These certifications are no real justiziable documents in the German sense of laws!


Apart from this, the Covid-19 numbers are again exploding in Europe because in almost every European country, about 30 % of all people are not fully vaccinated and after this summer, no one seems to have expected that there will come another cold weather and no one expected there would be winter weather ever again!

In Austria, similar examples of incredible human stupidity until the government decides something which will hurt the silly ones, for example causing the so-called "Schnitzel-Panik":

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.11.08_06h20m51s_001_.jpg

And these are "my" countries of which you would expect some more intelligent life forms in Europe!

No, we human beings are all simply silly or "doof" as you can say in a more gentle way and even we Germans have again proved an official stupidity:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h11m24s_002_.jpg

It is also no consolation for us that it is much worse everywhere in Eastern Europe - we are all just terribly stupid and Covid-19 shows us every day our stupidity!
 
And the huge problem that the German courts have with forged vaccination cards is that the relevant law was passed as early as 1881 and only refers to deceiving authorities and insurance companies and not to deceiving private individuals or innkeepers, etc.
And I cannot imagine that the people who passed this law back then could have guessed what a vaccination card would look like 140 years in the future, let alone how a smartphone or an i-pad would work.
 
This certainly means a moral dilemma for German Neo-Nazis, who are usually against this vaccination because of the possibility of alien or "Capitalist-American-Jewish-Bill-Gates"-ingredients or these Neo-Nazis think, this vaccination is just a fake in order to establish an international European-Jewish-American-Russian-Dictatorship on us poor Germans.
The good thing about it could be, that these Neonazis will follow the exemple of their Führer, and run for a vaccination now!:coti:

Moreover, in Germany, it is almost impossible to punish the persons for faking vaccination certifications because there is no law for this YET. These certifications are no real justiziable documents in the German sense of laws!
Strange! Isn'y forgery in general a punishable crime in Germany?:confundio1:
It is also no consolation for us that it is much worse everywhere in Eastern Europe - we are all just terribly stupid and Covid-19 shows us every day our stupidity!
What we call stupidity, others call it a cunning plan!:(
 
Strange! Isn'y forgery in general a punishable crime in Germany?:confundio1:

There has to be an "injured party" or someone who suffered "a damage" by the forgery. As "Heineudo" said before, the original law is from the year 1881 and is only about state authorities or insurance companies.
The German lawyers first have to find out who is "the damaged party or person" in a case of a falsified Covid-19 certification - and this can take a lot of time ... !

But we Germans have a lot of unusual jurisdiction which surprises all foreigners.

For example, one very often used test for surprising a German student of legal studies and jurisdiction is this question:
A (usually masked) man with a gun enters a bank but before talking to anyone, he turns around again. Policemen who are near by pure coincidence are arresting him because of the possibility of being a bank robber.

How will the German court decide?

Answer: The man possibly had the intention to rob the bank, but he could only be punished for the possible use of owning a not authorized gun, if it was not a toy at all.
He did not violate any German law because he did no harm to anyone, did not threaten or speak to anyone and he did not rob anyone.
He has to be freed at once and if he had to stay in prison for some time he has to be payed the loss of his salary if he would have been working in the time he was in prison.

Another strange example:

Germany is probably the only country in Europe - or possibly even in the whole world - in which the winner of a lottery does not have to pay any taxes for his win - no matter how high the amount of the win is!
The only reason is that a lottery win does not fit to any of the old Prussian-Imperial German tax laws - and there never was a new law declared for lottery winners!

But you have to be a German citizen in the moment of your lottery win to be free of any taxes and if you violate a German law after winning a lottery, the win will immediately be considered in the fine / penalty for you. There have been cases of persons who made something wrong with their spouses, estates, cars etc. and suddenly, the fine was no more 150,- € but e.g. 150.000,- €, depending on the amount of your lottery win before.

And we probably never will have a general speed limit on all of our "Autobahnen"!
Because we are crazy in love for our German cars and this is the usual way of showing our love:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h39m05s_024_.jpg

If there is a party member of the German "Green Party", who tells us that we are crazy, the reaction in our "boulevard press" is usually like this one:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h43m22s_027_.jpg = "The Green Monsters are attacking our cars!"

Everyone knows that the Greens will never govern in Germany because even our saints like "St. Tiguan" were already driving cars and the dangerous "Green demons" are already mentioned in our medieval church windows:

Ashampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h41m36s_025_.jpgAshampoo_Snap_2021.11.06_14h42m55s_026_.jpg

We are a funny country, aren't we?
 
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A (usually masked) man with a gun enters a bank but before talking to anyone, he turns around again. Policemen who are near by pure coincidence are arresting him because of the possibility of being a bank robber.
It seems obvious to me, since no crime has been commited. Actually, with all these lockdowns, the police nowadays would arrest people entering a bank WITHOUT wearing a mask!:doh::confused:

Germany is probably the only country in Europe - or possibly even in the whole world - in which the winner of a lottery does not have to pay any taxes for his win - no matter how high the amount of the win is!
There are more countries in Europe where no taxes have to be paid on winning a lottery. But the tax collectors will surely be on your neck, to tax the profits you made from the money you won.
 
It seems obvious to me, since no crime has been commited. Actually, with all these lockdowns, the police nowadays would arrest people entering a bank WITHOUT wearing a mask!:doh::confused:


There are more countries in Europe where no taxes have to be paid on winning a lottery. But the tax collectors will surely be on your neck, to tax the profits you made from the money you won.

Yes, as usual, you are right again.

But it is not easy to understand for "law-loving" German students that a man entering a bank with a gun will not have to go to prison.

And in these times, all the other German customers in the bank would certainly demand the bank robber to wear a mask as long as the Covid-19 restrictions are in place.
Today, I think, you can identify the German bank robbers easily by not wearing a mask when entering a bank!
:doh: :rolleyes:
In fact, I did not hear of any bank robbery in German for a long time. They are now trying to blow up the ATMs at night so they do not have to think too much about wearing masks or not.

And yes, there are some other little states like Monaco or Liechtenstein which do not need taxes on lottery wins, but I was suprised when I heard that a Swiss winner of the Euromillions-Jackpot had to pay 35 % taxes to the Swiss financial state authorities.

OK, we all know how small and extremely poor this little country Switzerland is where foreigners from Italy or Germany are forced to work in the banks there only to do this very dirty job of taking these terrible not disinfected foreign money bank notes in their poor bare hands, ... but I was surprised anyway ...
;)

But once, I was also surprised when I heard that many Liechtensteiners are afraid of a "foreign infiltration" by Swiss citizens, buying too many villas and mailbox companies there in Liechtenstein. So, even Swiss citizens found a place where they could feel discriminated because of their "poor wealth"!
:rolleyes: :eek:
 
Another example of a funny ... hm ... I really do not know if I should say "best" or "worst" German-English (= "Denglisch") in advertising for a radio competition, in which you can win a travel or the way to your job via train for one year:

IMG_20211008_152218373.jpg

The funny - or problematic (?) - thing here is that probably most elderly Germans look at this poster in German train stations and bus stops and they are thinking:
"What language is this meant to be and what the hell does it mean?"

Puzzle solving:
SWR 3 is a German radio station with the trademark of a "black forest moose / elk" (which certainly does not exist!) and this radio station usually plays music for younger people. They are usually correctly convinced that everyone of their audience is speaking English, so they are sometimes making funny advertisings like this one.
"Schenken" means "giving something for free as a gift or present" but ...
"juh se trävelling" is the German written version of speaking "you the travelling".

Would you have understood this when you are a native English speaker?

And I remarked an interesting difference between German and Austrian packagings for different kinds of ham which I bought the same day in the same German ALDI:

IMG_20211013_115618871.jpg

The German packaging is usually prosaic-sober-unemotional ("Schwarzwälder Schinken" = "Black Forest Ham", left half in this picture), the Austrian packaging (right half) - which is more expensive and the ham is also made more "sophisticated" - seems to sell an additional dream of Austria like it probably never was with beautiful Austrian children in Austrian national costumes.
I do not know, if German ham sold in the Floridian EPCOT center would have such a "sophisticated" packaging like this Austrian one but I think there could be collectors just for such a packaging.

(... and yes: according to the latest German spelling reform, "Walnussschinken" [= "walnut ham"] is correctly written with 3 "s"!)
 
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I once told you in another thread that I will inform you all when I start preparing to panic because we Germans usually prepare our actions for a long time.
:eek:

I just want to inform you all that I prepare to panic in about four weeks around Christmas this year because the Corona situation in Central Europe will most probably be completely out of control around that time.
:facepalm:

I hope that I am wrong but it does really look terrible in all scientific predictions.

And for the first time, we hear in Germany rumours and partly confirmed news that the German Air Force and military installations are preparing paramedic and precautionary rescue actions without being officially ordered by politicians because we are unfortunately right now in a situation after elections in which the new government has not really been installed and the old one of chancellor Merkel is only warning.

In a strange coincidence, there are other European states around us in similar situations, in which the governments are not really able to act, e.g. Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, demonstrations against new Corona measures of their governments turned extremely violent, so that I heard for the first time of Dutch police using sharp ammunition against attacking demonstrators because the lives of the policemen were in real danger.
This does not look good for the future.

Compared to the situation in the Netherlands, in Germany, it is still relatively peaceful ... yet ... but our problems are increasing this winter fast, too. For the first time, the German rescue helicopters are transporting Covid-19 patients from overloaded hospitals to free stations of intensive care INSIDE Germany!

The cases of infections are doubling every 12 days and this is an exponential growth! The vast majority of the infected are unvaccinated persons and there are still up to 30 % unvaccinated in those German regions which are now certainly the most hit ones.

The reasons for the German problems are well described in this article by a female doctor. The title is "Es ist zum ... " (= "It is to ..." and usually, this sentence in German is completed by the word "kotzen" = "vomit", but she writes in the end "Weitermachen" (= "carry on and on") :


Partly translated into English by Google translator:

It would have been so nice ...

The Robert Koch Institute had calculated how we could save ourselves the fourth wave: With a vaccination rate of 85 percent for 12 to 59 year olds and 90 percent for older people, the RKI wrote in July on »27. Epidemiological Bulletin, "there will probably not be a fourth wave in autumn and winter." How long ago that seems like. How hopeful you were then. Well missed the fine target!

Because now is autumn 2021 … The main infection process takes place primarily (if not exclusively) in the group of the unvaccinated - bad enough for those affected, but it also prolongs the pandemic for everyone. Possibly even with a rubber band effect: If the infection process continues like this, the vaccination breakthroughs will increase because many - especially the elderly - are already losing their vaccination protection. New virus mutations such as the emerging sub-variant of the delta type called AY.4.2 are not making the outlook any brighter.

As I said: This would have been avoidable. Mainly due to a high vaccination rate, which is proven by countries such as Spain and Portugal in Europe. Consistent adherence to the elementary AHA measures would also have helped. The instructions for use were there, only too many left them carelessly because the summer, the federal election, and everything else was annoying too. Facts? Obviously secondary.

This attitude sometimes takes on forms that really shock me. According to the COSMO survey mentioned above, vaccination refusing persons cannot even change their mind if unvaccinated people in intensive care units were given subordinate care (a purely hypothetical scenario that was only promised for the survey).

Many also seem unable to come up with a proper risk assessment, such as classifying what "exponential growth" means. They worship entire lists of side effects as an argument against vaccination. For them, the simple fact that the vaccination side effects are very rare - and that many of these side effects in the course of a Covid-19 infection are much more frequent and much more severe and can lead to actual "long-term damage". The calculation would not be difficult at all: sooner or later everyone who is not vaccinated will become infected. And for all of them, the balance shows on the one hand the risk of rare, often minor side effects in the course of the vaccination - and on the other hand the risk of developing a severe disease from the virus and suffering infection-related side effects with the prospect of permanent damage.

The consequences of an unbalanced balance sheet

None of this is new. Also here in my column I have long since explained this in various aspects. Now, however, I have the feeling that I am standing in front of a wall. There was once a consensus that important decisions must be made based on facts. Where did this consensus go? Can more education and more effort to get information make a difference? Or are we already clearly feeling the effects of a "post-factual" era, an indifference to the difference between facts and opinions that we could not prevent through political and social failures?

In any case, the signs of a split into irreconcilable camps are already clear. Unvaccinated people complain about the "pressure" placed on them and that they have been made the "scapegoat". Vaccinated people call unvaccinated people "hostage-takers": They are responsible for rocking the pandemic, for unnecessary disease burden and avoidable deaths; there would be a "tyranny of the unvaccinated"

But such ascriptions do not make anything easier, even if it allows you to let off steam. Dissent and argument will not help us. Not even after the pandemic: It is to be expected that the importance of vaccinations for disease prophylaxis will increase rapidly in the future as a result of the newly developed technologies. We cannot afford an opposition from a third of those who refuse to vaccinate with a high degree of factual resistance, just as we are currently in the pandemic.

It is questionable whether this opposition will be less or only louder if vaccination is now introduced against refusal to vaccinate. A strict vaccination requirement for everyone, would that be simply over-ambitious and legally questionable? If she does, will she come in time at all? Would it perhaps even cause more damage than good because it can only be organized, monitored and enforced with enormous effort? On the other hand, is a selective compulsory vaccination sufficient - such as one for medical nursing staff or teachers?

It would have been nice if it had long been unnecessary to ask such questions. In view of the fourth wave, with a view to an overwhelming majority of ignorance, one easily runs out of breath - including me. It is regrettable and dubious when politicians remain in a state of shock as soon as a development that has been warned again and again by the scientific community occurs, as was to be foreseen. I just have to put it this way: It's to ... carry on. I believe the
Enlightenment is not going to give up - it has never done that.


There are terrible movable diagrams in this report and I think the medium ones will come true which would mean another 100.000 cases of death in Germany alone until March / April 2022. In summer 2021, we were low at 50 cases of death every day, now we are up again to 200 - 300 every day!


I am really afraid, we are witnessing now "the merciless part of evolution at work" and this time, it will kill all the human beings who were not careful, intelligent and scientifically thinking enough to protect their families, their relatives and themselves, which would have been easy this year in our relatively rich Germany.

But no, personal egoism and the will to have your own maximum of misunderstood freedom and the right of so-called self-determination even in a pandemic by not taking part in vaccination campaigns was more important for a big part of our democratic societies - the most highly developed democratic countries in Europe as we thought such as the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France etc.

Probably now, the price will have to be paid by very many of us - and its name could be "Death".

"The predictions are not only dark - they are super-dark!", says the German president of the "Robert-Koch-Institute" which controls the infection numbers of Germany:

 
I once told you in another thread that I will inform you all when I start preparing to panic because we Germans usually prepare our actions for a long time.
:eek:

I just want to inform you all that I prepare to panic in about four weeks around Christmas this year because the Corona situation in Central Europe will most probably be completely out of control around that time.
:facepalm:

I hope that I am wrong but it does really look terrible in all scientific predictions.
Well, that doesn't affect me, I got my third vaccination one day after the 6 month deadline had passed, and got my affriction. But if the still incumbent Minister of Health announces, We have to vaccinate more, but at the same time announces that the Biontec vaccine has to be rationed. Because the booster vaccination should be carried out with the same vaccine as the first two. So he tries to start the vaccination campaign at the same time and stall it again at the same moment. But I may be expecting too much. Why should a German health minister have any idea about medicine?
 
Well, that doesn't affect me, I got my third vaccination one day after the 6 month deadline had passed, and got my affriction. But if the still incumbent Minister of Health announces, We have to vaccinate more, but at the same time announces that the Biontec vaccine has to be rationed. Because the booster vaccination should be carried out with the same vaccine as the first two. So he tries to start the vaccination campaign at the same time and stall it again at the same moment. But I may be expecting too much. Why should a German health minister have any idea about medicine?

I hope it does not and will not affect you or me, too. The problem is that we cannot be really sure about our future.

Just imagine an accident of any kind after which you might need intensive care ... but there is no place any more in the next hospital because the beds for intensive care are all occupied by not-vaccinated persons in the worst Covid-19 situations.

Then, we all might have "a little problem" in such a situation and please forget about most of our politicians. They all tried before the elections to show how "optimistic" we all can be when their parties would win. They all told us, the pandemic will be over soon and they all ignored the warnings of the scientists that we are far from over because the theory of "herd immunity" will not work and the vaccinations are losing their effects after about six months AND 30 % of the population will probably not take any vaccinations until it is probably too late!

And now, our hospitals are in the worst situation since the pandemic began and countries with high vaccination rates like Italy, Spain and Portugal are wondering what happened to those high developed countries in Central Europe which all had the best opportunities and the best vaccination possibilities but about 30 % of their population were simply too silly or too lazy to take these opportunities.

This is like learning about evolution the hardest way and all scientists are saying now, these will be the worst Christmas days during the whole pandemic for Germany, Austria, the Netherlands etc. We only have to wait a bit .... and our death rate will double in any case, say the scientists, because it is too late now for the first effective vaccination in this winter when you are not vaccinated at all up to now.

Aaand there is already something like a "latent triage" because in some hospitals, necessary cancer tumor operations are already delayed because of the full beds for intensive care. How long can you delay a "necessary operation" because there are no free beds and there probably will not be any free beds again soon? :

 
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