I’m watching the German cable channel, DW T . We are told that Angela Merkel is a physicist, that she “cares about numbers”, cares about “the facts” and therefore … schools will be closed and public gatherings outdoors will be banned. The numbers re schools are clear worldwide. They are not vectors of the virus. And, people don’t catch it outdoors. So what’s with that?
Apparently this is going to cost Germany €12 billion a month in compensation
Meantime here in Hong Kong. I’ve just been for a bike ride around our park. The playgrounds are roped off, the football pitch and tennis courts too. Again this makes no sense in the basis of “the science”. This is simply not an outdoor virus. An early widespread Chinese peer-reviewed study showed the same, but that science was ignored.
Contacts in Australia say things are “pretty much normal” there. Well, yes, but… you can’t go to Australia. Unless you get a government “certificate of exemption” which is (a) hard to get and (b) needs you to undergo a two week quarantine. So… normal except you can’t go there.
ADDED: Governor Cuomo — he of the inflated self-worth, he who sent unprotected oldies to their deaths in nursing homes — spoke some sense, facts, at a press conference on 11 December:
(12:03): We invested very heavily in doing COVID testing and we do more testing than any state in the nation, but that gives us actual facts that we can base our actions upon. And we’ve now done 21 million tests. So, we’ve actually done more tests than we have people in the state of New York now.
On the facts, what we’re seeing, schools are almost without exception, safer than local communities, in terms of infection rate. This was not what was initially expected. Initially, some of the experts said, “Well, schools are like mass gatherings, and if you get a lot of students together, there’s going to be a spread.” That is not what has happened. That’s not what the facts say. The facts say, that the schools are actually following the rules and following the guidance, the children are following the guidance. The teachers are doing a great job, following the guidance. And the schools, the positivity rate tends to be lower than the positivity rate in the surrounding community. My point is, if it is safer for the children to be in school, then have the children in school. If it’s safer for the teacher to be in school, then have the teacher in school. It’s less disruptive, the children get the education, you don’t have the same issues you have with remote learning. [My emphasis][Transcript]
And yet, Germany, HK, close schools.
