Unlucky: Autumn is here and Corona is still here

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Surprise: now it's autumn, then winter, then spring

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Up in the north

On October 12th, a comment with the title "When the Kreuzberg infection numbers are more important than hunger and war" appeared on "Welt" -Online, the author is Susanne Gaschke, temporarily Lord Mayor of Kiel.

The headline is useful because it exemplifies how one can create complete nonsense, hard lies, unfounded speculation or just tendentious confusion in the random combination of neutral facts by means of inconspicuous little words (here: "if" and "more important").

The poison then finds its way out of the headline into the meaning structures of what is below all by itself.

We know this from the market for non-fiction books with a W title: Why everything is getting worse and worse;

How the government deceives us;

What could men be good for;

Why I didn't get rich and famous, etc. By finding such a title, the intellectual achievement has essentially been achieved; it takes place in the publishing house.

The remainder that the author has to provide consists in the repetition of any allegation from the blurb, divided into alleged chapters, based on proven sources ("More and more taxpayers have the impression that ...") or on evidence in ping-pong mode ("The NYT wrote in 2011 that it would end badly ... ").  

In the present case, the author announced at the beginning that she would tell us what would be going on when Kreuzberg-Corona is more important than "hunger and war".

Well: if!

So again new questions: What does "more important" mean?

For whom?

Who is measuring this and with which Wichtometer?

And above all: What does "if" mean?

Is it so or not?

If not: then why ask?

If so, what is the claim based on?

It is a cross with the W titles: They appear as light as a soap bubble and then contain nothing but hydrogen sulfide.

Let's take a quick look at the evidence:

It is no longer sensible how one-sided politics and large parts of the media focus on a single disease.

Hunger, hardship, misery and war in other parts of the world?

Unpleasant, but not as important as the infection

figures

So one thing is certain: The author is convinced that Covid-19 is factually, but incorrectly, "more important" than hunger & war, at least for "politics and large parts of the media", which are two somewhat vague, but familiar villains.

In order to denounce her work (infection) and inactivity (hunger & war), the author wrote a comment in a press medium - not about hunger & war, but about corona and the number of infections.

That's how it is, says Niklas Luhmann: law can only come from law, and journalism arises from journalism.

The motto of the comment is:

Since hardly anyone dies from Corona at the moment ... the executive and bureaucracy are now focusing on the number of infections.

An analogous application of this bizarre message raises doubts: Because hardly anyone dies at pedestrian crossings controlled by traffic lights, the traffic police fixate on red light violations.

Because only a few people die of typhus, the municipal utilities fixate on the expansion and renovation of the sewer system.

Causality Theory Highlights!

The problem lies in the pointlessness of the link and in the incorrect evaluation of the correlation, this time with the opposite sign.

Perhaps

hardly anyone

dies anymore

because the executive and (?) Bureaucracy (!) Are "fixated" on minimizing the number of infections.

And maybe we would just have to wait a little longer and keep increasing the number of infections and someone would die again!

And anyway: what else should the executive "fix" itself on and the bureaucracy at the same time?

Ok, the last question is unfair, because Ms. Gaschke gave the answer: hunger & war.

That's just always true, so it can't be wrong at all.

Thomas Fischer, arrow to the right

Born in 1953, is a legal scholar and was Chairman of the 2nd Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice.

He is the author of an annually revised standard short commentary on the criminal code and numerous other specialist books.

Everything depends on the comparative "more important".

Who actually noticed that?

Is it at all true?

For example, do Kiel residents perceive the Kreuzberg infection figures as more important than the mental position of the POTUS or the phenomenal resilience of his young challenger?

Is the pandemic situation in Friedrichshain more important for Flensburg residents than the herring supply in the Baltic Sea?

I don't really believe it, but who knows!

Probably the author doesn't mean it literally, but somehow in a figurative sense, i.e. in terms of mood.

It stinks that in Germany there is no talk of hunger & war and that people do not fight hunger, war and epidemics in the world with all their might and maximum fixation, as there is malaria, measles, dengue fever, tuberculosis, AIDS and others.

That is an honorable approach.

Wide world

It could not be understood by anyone, said MP Laschet on October 14th on breakfast television, that although hundreds of thousands of commuters travel between Brandenburg and Berlin, capital of the pandemic, every day, you are not allowed to spend the night in the forest.

That's true!

Whether this example struck the heart of the hotel and restaurant association (Dehoga) is of course a different question, because overnight overnight stays in the forest could generate a cash flow for forest catering start-ups, but it would leave them for 9 euros an hour refined junior suites empty.

Help is needed now, because the facts are not sticking to the plans we made in spring: surprisingly, there will be autumn holidays this year and Christmas holidays in about two months.

This is a shock!

All the beautiful bookings melt away, and with them the overdraft facility!

When were the trips actually booked?

In the end even from March?

Couldn't we then perhaps say: bad luck?

The state doesn't have to step in if you don't win the lottery.

And isn't the holy market economy the system that the human race was once promised: In the beginning there was the contract?

Is there actually a basic right to travel three times a year from the catchment area of ​​one risk-free amusement park to that of another?

There is a fundamental right that not a single one of the countless risks, about which consumers are tirelessly educated by hundreds of warning, test, advice, interest, education and made-easy-for-beginners associations, is realized once ?

Hadn't you heard a hundred times that you shouldn't go into debt so much that you couldn't survive unexpected catastrophes (illness, death, unemployment, divorce)?

Is it a human right to always be able to put all the levers in life planning to "full speed ahead" as long as you can raise the premiums for home contents, travel cancellation and liability insurance?

Now, as predicted, the virus and us are first about to fall and then winter.

Then comes spring.

During these times of the year there is often a lowering of the average temperature and damp and cold precipitation.

This may have been temporarily out of sight because the really important issues were the organization of the summer holidays, the fixed costs of the tourism industry in midsummer and the question of which predictions by virologists, epidemiologists, pandemiologists and respirators have proven to be imprecise and will have to do so next time need to be improved.

At the moment there is concern about the prognosis that frequent ventilation in class dreams (fresh air and aerosol removal) will lead to cooling of the interior in winter and consequently to cooling of the student material.

Parents' associations immediately demanded that all schools be provided with warm blankets.

It is unthinkable when thousands of innocent children catch a flu-like infection (we don't even want to talk about influenza!) Due to the carelessness of the school administrations and the lack of national ventilation regulations and thus their fathers and especially mothers who have just been released into the freedom of the office office again Forcing into burnout at home!

As a side note: With regard to the placement of the children near or far from the window that can be opened, interesting topics for virtual parents' evenings and video school meetings can be foreseen.

The politic

This brings us to a serious topic: federalism in Germany in and of itself and its effects on global epidemics.

It is, as we have heard, unbearable for Germans that an offense against the statutory mask requirement does not result in a fine in one federal state, in another of 80 euros and in a third one of 250 euros.

Where the average German citizen does not want to put on the mask every day in four different federal states.

And now he can't remember how much it costs.

Of course, he knows in which German spa towns a permanent and in which a temporary inner city parking ban applies, but that's different.

This small state!

And the terrible bans on lodging!

A Cologne resident is not allowed to spend the night in Mainz, but not the other way around.

Or was it the other way around?

Prime ministers are shaken.

It's as if Germans were allowed to travel freely to Syria, but not the other way around.

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Title: On Punishment: Law and Security in a Democratic Society

Editor: Droemer HC

Number of pages: 384

Author: Fischer, Thomas

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What is actually happening with the state?

As is well known, an astonishing number of people are convinced that the Covid-19 epidemic will inevitably, or at least if something is not done immediately, lead to a preventive dictatorship of the evil kind or have already done so.

The question immediately arises, what should be done in the opinion of the fighters for the free Hasenheide and the free "celebration" that alone allows us to endure the agony of life.

As far as I can see there are only two types of plans.

First: Lock up all the old, sick, fat, short of breath and hypochondriac and let the rest rip.

From the point of view of a 20-year-old club visitor with a washing machine at Mutti's, this is a cool solution, but it has weaknesses: About half of the people would then have to be locked up and taken care of by the other half, who are not allowed in because they are outside are.

In addition, you would have to set up a tough regime of physical examinations to filter out the countless free riders who would suddenly feel too weak for work and for Corona.

Second: let everything go until the final victory herd immunity.

Flanked by the Sagrotan injection and the exclusive supply of hand-mixed antibody cocktails to all income millionaires, this is the Donald method: whoever dies is a loser.

Here, too, dear young people, besides the lack of money, there are a few dangers lurking: The matter of herd immunity is a statistical and fairly natural phenomenon, in other words: pretty close to evolution.

So it is not unlikely that you would have to pay an individual price for the health of a herd of say 20 million average geniuses and idiots with the lives of your parents, your teachers and your favorite rapper or even with your own.

If you don't care, it can be said that the beautiful contamination in Sweden brought it to a maximum of 8 percent, with ten times as many deaths as in this country.

And that herd immunity does not always want the way we do, which can be seen from the fact that, astonishingly, 20,000 people in Germany are still dying from influenza or from measles or shingles and tens of millions of people around the world are killed by infectious diseases that have been caused by the for centuries Immunity of herds allowed to work.

One last thing: It seems that a not insignificant number of unspectacular Covid-19 infected people are left with long-term damage that is really not worth striving for in the long term that is currently still young.

Perhaps one tries to imagine that there is no longer any protection against AIDS because the condoms are annoying and hardly anyone dies from it in this country.

Let's assume the HIV infection rate was two percent: would you then forego any protection?

Prevention

Sure: examples are lagging.

And everything would be different if it were different.

And it is super incomprehensible that you should put on a mask on the lonely way to the restaurant table and not in the circle of happy eaters.

But that's the way it is with the control of mass behavior and large numbers.

You are not allowed to drive over red traffic lights even if there is no cross-traffic far and wide.

And you have to drive on the right-hand side of the road, although some people might drive better on the left.

If a bridge is closed because of the risk of collapse, even small, light children should not be sent over.

Let us assume that there are terrible monsters out in the woods that attack and eat people in red hats.

Let us further assume that of 100,000 Red Cap bearers, an average of 40,000 would be pursued by the monsters, 4000 would be caught and 1000 would be eaten up.

Per month.

What do you think would then be going on with "politics and large parts of the media", with "executive and bureaucracy"?

It's not difficult to imagine.

It is enough if five children are kidnapped and raped by criminals with disordered personality and 5,000 child pornographic images are distributed across the country every day.

There is no question of herd immunity or the statistically low probability, and neither of the struggle for the freedom of the good, for which one would have to accept a few vulnerable victims.

Instead: full surveillance!

Cameras everywhere!

Data retention!

Data networking!

Police access to private computers, cell phones, cameras, microphones!

Fake pornographers and fake children as agents provocateurs!

Undercover agents!

No more statute of limitations, data protection, the presumption of innocence!

Another limping example?

It's about danger and about prevention.

And the example should say: It always depends.

Some find the probability of three sexually motivated child murders per year unbearably high, some - often the same - that of 20,000 preventable deaths from infections is perfectly fine: at some point you will die!

For the individual infection victim, the virus is just as fateful as the drunk driver for the schoolchild at the zebra crossing.

That means: We have long been living in a society that has been obsessed with the idea of ​​prevention, with an unparalleled need for security and precaution, a care status like never before in history and a state that is fully equipped to recognize threats from terrorism, for example, with great precision can turn off.

If someone slips through the mesh and has fatal "success", it is considered a scandalous failure of the security authorities.

With countless public restrictions on freedom, speed or earning opportunities for reasons of precaution and hazard prevention, hardly anyone asks seriously whether it might not be cheaper or whether DIN standards should be: whether it is not an acceptable risk to life, from lightning or from unsecured Killed electrical appliances, hit them to death by falling roof tiles or stabbed to death by insane violent criminals - just fate.

Couldn't the money that is spent on fire protection in Germany also be a great way to fight hunger, war and poverty?

If there's a fire, it burns, the insured residents of the ground floor apartments could say, and the elderly with walking difficulties shouldn't move to the fourth floor.

So it is with Covid-19 like with many other things: Everything is changing, and the standards have to be redefined, i.e. discussed first.

It really doesn't help to call for some "power words" or the end of silly pseudo-problems.

It

is already clear

that

a whole goes on, but it does not help much if you are afraid.

There will be no redemption, and the mutating viruses that leap from animals to humans will appear more frequently in the future and will spread much faster than they used to be.

It's all a matter of time, and in a "globalized" society where everything has to happen at the same time for it to function as it is, time goes by very quickly.

The next virus might come from the Lower Saxony pig and kill 60 percent of people, or a container with Ebola infected people ends up on the northern edge of the Mediterranean, in the middle of Saint-Tropez, Rimini or Rostock.

You have to think about prevention as a concept as a whole and not just depending on the day's interests.

The questions of how to organize Christmas in an old people's home and how to withstand the terrible demands of work, family and idle free time are part of it.

Hunger & war, that is what the commentator of the "Welt" allegedly worries about, are of course also part of it;

especially the "injustice" that a 17-year-old is shot by a gunman.

This does not include the sub-text "What do I care about Corona when there is civil war in Yemen and a 20-year-old has to die of leukemia?"

This is either cynical nonsense or a mere trumpet of one's own no-go-go mentality.

In other words: one would have to add what one intends to do in the fight against leukemia and in the effort for peace in Yemen or what is expected of the government.

If you can't think of anything urgent, I think you can stay at home for the time being, reduce social contacts to a minimum, follow advice and instructions and wait to see if someone soon has something more important to say than that it is unheard of about this virus, just stay there and spoil your mood.

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