The German Lounge

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by MrPicard, Feb 9, 2020.

  1. Doctor Tiki

    Doctor Tiki Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Jan 16, 2020
    The location is a fixture in the minds of regional clients, attracting the rich and famous of the city. That makes it attractive to future buyers. However, the fact also is somewhat crazy: This upper class restaurant doesn't seem to profit as much as to lure the owners for another go. At the moment, it's ordered to be closed, and the owners announced: not re-opening, again.
     
  2. rhubarbodendron

    rhubarbodendron Vice Admiral Admiral

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    milky way, outer spiral arm, Sol 3
    a surprising number of shops in my town is going to close. 2 of 3 mattrass and bedding shops, for example. Though I always wondered how they survive. After all, you buy a new mattrass or a duvet maybe once every 10 years.
    A few big shops use the temporary shutdown as a lame excuse to reduce their staff and close dependancies that didn't earn enough profit. Since at the same time they also get funded by the state for the lockdown of these dependancies, they profit twice. That's rather unethical imho.
    One shop had a sign up that made me laugh:
    If closing a shop means the best for the customer, I wonder how bad their services must have been before :D
     
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  3. Nakita Akita

    Nakita Akita Commodore Commodore

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    Feb 8, 2017
    Here, small businesses will just go broke.
    The owners will lose all of their money.
    Some my lose things like even their house.
    Sometimes people secure their businesses with personal assets like that.
    It's sad. I think the government shouldn't be allowed to tell business owners to close their doors. (In the USA, I mean)
    I think if the business owner wants to risk getting ill and the customers are okay with the risk that's how it should be.
    Like how many businesses should end up broke, how many people should lose their jobs, how many people should lose their homes, people getting depressed, just so some person can feel safe?
     
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  4. KennyB

    KennyB I have spoken............ Moderator

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    Tokyo Japan
    Here in Baden-Württemberg CONFIRMED CASES are at 172,239 with DEATHS at 7,723 but Stuttgart seems to be coming back to life for most things. Plagues can be so inconveniant.
     
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  5. rhubarbodendron

    rhubarbodendron Vice Admiral Admiral

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    milky way, outer spiral arm, Sol 3
    in Bavaria as by midnight: 45 143 cases (+164 compared to the previous day) and 2 260 dead (+31).
    I think we profit from our rural structure. Many small settlements with a lot of space between them.

    In my district we get more and more people ignoring the distance rule. So the figures are rapidly rising again (7-10 per day when 2 weeks ago we were already down to zero for several days in a row). Fortunately, in the district where my old parents live, the infection rate sinks steadily (only 1 per day now).

    What's interesting and frustrating is the death rate in comparism to the infection rate:
    in R where they have the university clinic 1 out of 60 dies. In DEG it's 1 out of 25, in CHA 1 out of 20.
    The privatizing of hospitals in the country and the consequent attempts to reduce costs have lead to a dramatic loss of medical standards and the weakest in the link have to pay for the clinic's owner's financial politics with their lives.
    It's those unneccessary deaths that anger me. There's something extremely wrong with our health system if your survival depends on your location.
     
  6. Astra

    Astra Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Location:
    Dresden, Germany
    And what about the people those people then infect, who did not agree to risk it?
     
  7. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    This has nothing to do with Germany, and you've already made the same argument ad nauseam all over the forum, so take it elsewhere.
     
  8. ThreeEdgedSword

    ThreeEdgedSword Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Sheer Fucking Hubris
    In my city, people have adhered to the distancing rules for, like, 10 days after lockdown. Now, hardly anyone bothers anymore. Bikers and joggers haven't done it anyway. So whenever politicians claim that the majority of the population is oh-so-responsible and sensible, I just wonder where the heck they live.
     
  9. rhubarbodendron

    rhubarbodendron Vice Admiral Admiral

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    @Nakita Akita that is one advantage of Germany being a Social State (that's explicitly in our constitution). This way the government has to care for the small shop owners. There's a huge rescue fund from which everyone can get money relatively fast and unbureaucratic.(Artists, too, btw. They count as 1-person-company :) )
    People who lose their jobs get unemployment money and governmental assistance with finding new jobs.
    People who are ill can not be fired. And the employer must pay their wages for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks the insurance takes over and pays 75% of the wages.
    The big difference to the US is that in Germany, social insurance, unemplyoment insurance and medical insurance are mandatory. Everone pays them. This way we have sufficient funds for those who need them. The government has only to look after the shop owners and we finance that from our taxes and governmental savings. Contrary to the US we were in the black figures for the last decade.
    And last but not least nobody can be fired here from one day to the next. The minimum notice time for employers is 3 months unless in really extreme cases, e.g. when the employee attempts to murder the boss.
    All this comes at a price (I pay about 65% of my income in taxes and mandatory insurances) but we are willing to pay it because in the long run it benefits everybody.
     
  10. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Tough.

    Some things are more important than business and profit. Even Quark learned that. So should we.

    The public health overrides "freedom of economic association" in a pandemic.
     
  11. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Location:
    America, Fuck Yeah!!!
    They should quit whining and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Like they tell poor people whenever something unfortunate happens to them.
     
  12. MrPicard

    MrPicard Jean-Luc's Loving Husband Fleet Captain

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    Dec 29, 2019
    Same. People in my home village tried for a while, but for the most part things have gone back to normal now. I walked past the tram station last week on my way to the grocery store - everyone was wearing a mask. I walked past it this week again on my way to the grocery store - exactly one person was wearing a mask. I expected this, but it's still frustrating.
     
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  13. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Rhubard, Eddie, and Bill, please don't respond to Nakita's post after I've told her to take her complaint to a more appropriate thread.
     
  14. rhubarbodendron

    rhubarbodendron Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^my appologies. No disrespect intended.
    Same here :( I look up the new infection rate per district every morning and at my town it's been on the rise again ever since the lockdown was moderated. The same goes for the city where my sister and sister-in-law live. Thank heavens, in the district where my elderly and immune-deficient parents live people appear to be more reasonable. The rate of new infections is steadily nearing zero there.
    My sisters and I decided to not visit our parents until the infection rates are at zero on both our regions/cities.
     
  15. Kilana2

    Kilana2 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    What shall they do with mentally ill people running around without mask and spitting at people out of spite?

    Mental Hospital is place I wouldn't want to work right now.

    And I don't like people who disrespect the work of the Doctors and Nurses by refusing to live in the same house with them, claiming they would spread the virus. What will they do without a nurse if they fall ill and are hospitalized?
     
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  16. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    None taken. :)
     
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  17. MrPicard

    MrPicard Jean-Luc's Loving Husband Fleet Captain

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    It's stable in my village so far but in the nearest city numbers are also rising again (I'm absolutely not surprised). It's only a matter of time before someone carries it back here again since a lot of people commute from the village into the city to work.
     
  18. Kilana2

    Kilana2 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    elderly care homes are dangerous places these days.....
     
  19. MrPicard

    MrPicard Jean-Luc's Loving Husband Fleet Captain

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    They sure are. Our neighboring district had an outbreak in one of them. 26 people died. :(
     
  20. rhubarbodendron

    rhubarbodendron Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^would that have been in Freiburg? That was the home my sister in law volunteered to work. She was there for 2 weeks. During the first week they had no protective gear whatsoever. In week 2 they got at least coats and surgery masks. Lab coats ought to be changed for treating every patient and the masks are strictly for one time use. However, they had to wear the same coat and mask all week. No wonder so many nurses and patients got infected.
    And what really angers me is to see "civilians" running around in FFP3 masks they hoarded by the dozen while the medical staff has trouble getting at least one FFP2 per person (also meant for one time use but they get desinfected again and again until they dissolve).