Covid19 update
Erdogan said: the country is stronger than the virus. Trump thinks the lockdown will be over by Easter, Bolsorano (Brazil's president) clearly sees the media responsible for panic-dramatising a spreading cold that would not affect even him as an old man for more than a day, and even Lindner said that staying home goes against people's wishes.
Everyone is right. Of course a country is stronger than a virus, if only because of the biomass, the lock down takes place in the head, so nothing that happens with Trump, the state of health of a president who anyway thinks he is the only person in the world who is allowed to talk about himself remains trapped in the fantasy of his little universe anyway, well, and even a blind chicken like the FDP leader vR (before retirement) finds a grain of corn in relation to his brain once in a while.
But what is actually happening in the world?
How could it happen that something that no one can see (just like the so-called HI virus, which is held responsible for the immunodeficiency syndrome AIDS, has been on the loose for decades and was at least initially - watch out: (just as the so-called HI virus, which is responsible for the immune deficiency syndrome AIDS, has been on the loose for decades and was at least initially - note the pun - feverishly sought, Covid19 has not yet come to the attention of an electron microscope, but there are antibody tests that supposedly detect it) paralyses the world in such a way that even the only people who ever had their way in a peaceful revolution and shortly afterwards realised that it was better for everyone beforehand, voluntarily renounces its basic rights and stays at home under threat of punishments that do not exist because they are not supported by any law - you cannot arbitrarily make up rules and threaten voters, because they themselves have a head with which to think, with punishing them if they do not follow them.
Of course it makes sense to stay at home if you fear catching an unknown disease; you don't have to threaten anyone to do that, especially not elected representatives to their constituents.
Job loss due to closed businesses is force majeure and not insured
There is a reason why Angela Merkel formulated things so strangely, and spoke not of punishments but of sanctions, and did not call it curfew but a restriction of contact: the Basic Law. It cannot be repeated often enough: the Basic Law, which is above all separation of powers and all exercise of power by the state - many would call it a constitution that defines and holds together the state itself - does not provide for a state of emergency, which many countries have manoeuvred themselves into through globalised opinion-making, as AKK would call it.
Many heads of government can simply declare something like this in order to give individual state organs more powers, which makes sense. For example, during the flood in Hamburg in 1962, it made sense to tell people to 'stay away from the water's edge' - which, however, any complete idiot without a disaster case had also realised if he didn't want to fall into the water. A piquant detail: even then, the catastrophe case had not been included in the Basic Law, but only in 1968 on the occasion of the hippie uprisings.
So the appeal to reason is the tool we use here. After all, Merkel also said when the euro was introduced that there was no need for laws prohibiting price increases, that she trusted the economy.
Likewise, the closure of production facilities on the part of the companies - not the government - and the dismissal of employees is a quite reasonable measure so that the extra 156 billion in new debt in this federal budget benefits the companies and not the people who were laid off. The resulting reassurance of those made redundant, be it because of their professional, health or fundamental situation, would be irresponsible; after all, such a government cannot take care of everything, especially its voters. To eliminate further discrepancies, the next step is to change the electoral law. People will no longer vote, but companies will vote according to the number of employees. Then those laid off will be rehired - under worse conditions, of course - so that the company gets more voting rights.
What the federal government is doing to prevent lawsuits by the closed businesses in the hospitality industry and the workers who have been dismissed without basic rights follows in the next update.