What's Germany doing so right?

[kiaa]

The daily Coronavirus update by country:

Notice something? Out of 35K+ total cases in Germany, just below 200 deaths. A stunning difference from the other countries. So what's Germany doing so right? Why are so few people dying in Germany compared to Italy, Spain, etc? It's not like there aren't old people there too, right? Well, the answer might be a bit complicated. As you might suspect, it's a combination of factors.

When the epidemic broke out, there were many cases of infected people returning from skiing vacations in the Alps and elsewhere. Those were mostly people under 80 years of age, and in a generally good health condition. Naturally, the risk of a fatal end is relatively smaller in that group.

( Read more... )

Watching American political mythology die in slow motion sure is something

[dancesofthelight]

After decades of insisting that government is the problem, not the solution, and that Jesus Christ is a magical Jewish sky fairy to kiss all wounds and make them better, the USA is learning the exact same lesson its fellow superpower did. Reality doesn't give two shakes of a rat's ass what a national mythology says, it will merrily steamroll it in an overpowering lesson in how all ideologies fail, ossify, and die.

( In Which Magical Jewish Sky Fairy Fucks Off Elsewhere )

( In which Papa Nurgle gives his virus-hugs to those moronic enough to welcome them )

And on a personal note, my state in the USA is keeping up its streak of being first in the shit and last in the good.
( People in my state prove to be far stupider than I already knew they are, and they were already fucking stupid )

This is the kind of primitive stupidity I live among, and which endangers the lives of people I have a pseudo-obligation to care about but burned their bridges with me long ago, and actually innocent people who are the real reasons for precautions because doing otherwise is monstrous. So here I am, watching the world burn, and seeing that people around me are so ludicrously obsessed with marching to their own destruction it exceeds the standards so low even Godzilla would be awed at the amount of room therein I already had for them.

I thought I could not hate this shitty ratty country obsessed with civilization-busting weapons it will never use in anger and mistaking them for anything but that more, and then Beervirus moved it to something, frankly, beyond the impossible.

So yeah, the mythology that 'made America great' is dying by inches, and I have some idea how the relatively sane people in Austria in 1914 must have felt watching the senile old philandering douchebag decide two stupid-ass wars he lost weren't enough, it was time to exceed that record with the most spectacular military failure since Santa Anna blessed Mexico by dying