MJ80 wrote:We went shopping to the local big town near us for the first time since the outbreak began. The response over here has been so different to the chaos I am seeing in the UK. The Germans got lots of things right from the chaos at the start. The manual contact tracing and containment - anyone who had contact with an infected person was put into self isolation with a really heavy fine enforced, drive through test centres were set up. GP's directed any potential infections directly to the test centre and then into self isolation whilst the results came back. Obviously the lock down and closing the schools. The reopening of business has been going OK as far as I can see, screens are up at counters, a facemask must be worn in shops and people are generally keeping the social distance. You need to take a trolley into a shop as a social barrier, simple but it keeps the message. There is the contact tracing app up and running now as well, which should help keep an overview on how things progress.
Anyway into the big town and the centre of town was busy, shops had one way systems going with entry and exit. You had to sanitize your hands when entering a shop, most places had a member of staff with a clicker keeping track of numbers in the shop. I know it is all slower and I am happy with that. Some here don't realise how lucky they are with the response and how the rate has been pushed down. The kids are looking at starting school full time after the holiday. Where there have been outbreaks and flare ups the districts have been placed into immediate lockdown again. My big worry is this is going to be a big calm before the next wave which is going to hit us soon, we are only at the beginning of this story.
Stay safe people.
Yup. It's been well-documented just how excellent the German response was. Very good article in the FT Weekend a while back. Meanwhile, back here in Middle Earth..oops, sorry, Muddle Earth BoJo's still looking for the brewery.