First up: Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany and siren of the north. She is childless.
Merkel's sidekick, Jens Spahn, did not spawn; he instead married Daniel Funk, who presides over the celebrity-gossip tabloid Bunte, a rag known for paparazzi photos and being taken to court for such. The duo are good pals with Richard Grenell, the American Ambassador to Germany who cannot speak German and is childless, too (and, likewise, gay).
All in all, we have the A-Team of infertility. But their special strength also includes being extraordinarily incapable of leadership and constantly ignoring the public they are serving. If they made a television series out of this A-Team, every episode would leave the viewer asking the same question: why are these people leading us?
BBC:
Mrs Merkel made the stark prediction at a news conference on Wednesday alongside Health Minister Jens Spahn. She said since there was no known cure, the focus would fall on slowing the spread of the virus. "It's about winning time," she explained.Winning time by slowing the spread? Well then, how about quarantining visitors and closing the border - like your friends in Israel?
Merkel's remarks came as Italy entered its second day of national lockdown. [...] Speaking alongside Mr Wieler at a press conference - her first public address on the outbreak - Chancellor Merkel warned that border closures would not be enough to prevent the spread of the virus. She ruled out following Austria's lead in banning visitors from Italy. "This is a test for our solidarity, our common sense and care for each other. And I hope we pass the test," she said.So basically, Merkel says it would not be enough to just close the borders, so why bother closing the the borders at all? Much better to have the entire country locked down and close all the businesses, schools, gyms, public events and general life, apparently?
"Logic", folks.
Virologist Alexander Kekulé, a former federal government advisor on disease control, told German media that in the worst case scenario a maximum of 40,000 people in the country would get the virus. He said this estimation was based on the number of cases in China, where the rate of new infections is slowing.So: "it is impossible to stop this thing", but "the thing will stop at 40,000". Did I hear that correctly? Note that the statistics from her "worst-case scenario" are now actually what we could hope for in a best-case scenario, assuming we are able to handle the coronavirus outbreak as China has, and no boomerang effect occurs. Well, that's encouraging.
He had earlier said that the German government missed opportunities to contain the outbreak further by shutting schools and cancelling events.Or you could have watched your borders better instead of finding the pathway where your population has to suffer the most. How hard would that have been?
Wednesday also saw Berlin city authorities ban all events with more than 1,000 participants until the end of the Easter holidays. "The coronavirus continues to spread. In such a phase, public life must be restricted," said the city's Health Minister, Dilek Kalayci. "The spread of the coronavirus can be slowed down by reducing major events. At the beginning of an epidemic, such a restriction is important."Kalayci is a female born in Turkey. It is interesting to note that she is not pounding the table and demanding the border be closed. But of course: her party, the Social Democrat Party (SPD), is an open-borders political party, even if some of its own members do not realize this. It is what Merkel's "conservatives" are supposed to be the counterweight to but, in reality, are not. We see this when Merkel and her friends advocate that the border remain open indefinitely because doing otherwise would be in the interests of those who wanted to curb immigration during the migration crisis. But of course.
With so many fails, you have to wonder what is going on here. But I think I figured it out: Germany's A-Team is taking advice from the A-Team television show:
"There are 8,000 good guys [across the border]. And I'm not going to let one crud [like Corona] muck it up for the rest of them."
— Police Inspector Ed Maloney (Norman Alden), The A-Team, Season 1: A Small and Deadly War
The West is taking policy advice from a successful early 80s television sitcom fantasy world. It all makes sense now.
