T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
Germans are hoarding disinfectants, pasta and toilet paper. They are entering hospitals to steal face-masks and hand-wash bottles. Germany is not good at dealing with a crisis.
The British on the other hand (despite all the silly hype on TV) are seldom happier than when there is a national crisis. Brits are excellent at dealing with a crisis and love mucking-in and making-do! Three-day week? Bath with a friend? Come on! Power cuts mean dinner by candlelight!
Germans love a detailed and well-structured plan. Aldi has a plan for the next 100 years. Tesco says that it has a plan for the next five years - but I doubt it somehow! British companies are excellent at flying by the seat of their pants. They call that being flexible, but it is born of being unprepared and all-too-often, deep in debt. In a regulated world where things are supposed to function, being unprepared is laughed at. In a crisis, Brits are so used to having to struggle from day-to-day, that they excel.
When the first BMWs and Beetles came onto the UK market, executives at Austin and Morris laughed. When Honda produced a two-stroke version of the Mini, they laughed even louder.
When Aldi and Lidl came to the UK market, nobody in UK retail took them seriously. Not one major retail consultant or manager bothered to study their track-record across Europe and the devastating effect they could have on less-fit competition. Nobody asked why they might be buying-up key sites on the access roads into most towns and cities over 30 years ago.
Like the Martian space ships in Spielberg's version of War-of-The-Worlds, they just seemed to appear out of the ground and from nowhere. But planning for the conquering of the UK market had begun about ten years earlier. The power of long-term planning!
But Germany does not have a plan for the Coronavirus.
The images of quarantine cities worldwide seem threatening - but according to nearly all experts, Corona is largely harmless. Sooner or later, the majority of people will catch this virus, most of them will have a sore throat and runny nose for two or three days and that's it! The likelihood of dying from this new disease is very low. In terms of mathematics, it is constantly falling because more and more people are becoming infected - and recovering again. Corona is not Ebola.
But the panic buying of medical protective equipment is developing into the actual health crisis in Germany. Healthy citizens who buy disinfectants and face masks or even steal them from hospitals are the bitter consequences of confused disaster news on all channels and even from the German government. This is dangerous for people who rely on a sterile environment, such as cancer patients during chemotherapy.
Instead of getting a grip of the situation and announcing clear plans, German politicians are blaming doctors and doctors are blaming the politicians! In fact, almost no one foresaw the panic buying by the public. Given the speed and force with which real and false news unfolds on social media today, this is a fatal omission.
The Coronavirus shows that Germany is not prepared for the unexpected. The health minister had to admit that no emergency plans were in place or practiced. Nobody knows how doctor's offices, clinics and emergency services will continue to function when their personnel are in quarantine. Now imagine a virus that is more contagious, more dangerous and more frightening - and this situation seems to be being repeated across most countries in Europe and beyond.
Germany has 77 state-regulated healthcare schemes. The UK has one. The NHS is just downright hopeless at providing routine health care. You can wait two years for a routine operation and maternal death-rates in childbirth are over 50% higher than in Germany - but just this once I am glad that the NHS exists.
A national crisis requires a national health system!
The British on the other hand (despite all the silly hype on TV) are seldom happier than when there is a national crisis. Brits are excellent at dealing with a crisis and love mucking-in and making-do! Three-day week? Bath with a friend? Come on! Power cuts mean dinner by candlelight!
Germans love a detailed and well-structured plan. Aldi has a plan for the next 100 years. Tesco says that it has a plan for the next five years - but I doubt it somehow! British companies are excellent at flying by the seat of their pants. They call that being flexible, but it is born of being unprepared and all-too-often, deep in debt. In a regulated world where things are supposed to function, being unprepared is laughed at. In a crisis, Brits are so used to having to struggle from day-to-day, that they excel.
When the first BMWs and Beetles came onto the UK market, executives at Austin and Morris laughed. When Honda produced a two-stroke version of the Mini, they laughed even louder.
When Aldi and Lidl came to the UK market, nobody in UK retail took them seriously. Not one major retail consultant or manager bothered to study their track-record across Europe and the devastating effect they could have on less-fit competition. Nobody asked why they might be buying-up key sites on the access roads into most towns and cities over 30 years ago.
Like the Martian space ships in Spielberg's version of War-of-The-Worlds, they just seemed to appear out of the ground and from nowhere. But planning for the conquering of the UK market had begun about ten years earlier. The power of long-term planning!
But Germany does not have a plan for the Coronavirus.
The images of quarantine cities worldwide seem threatening - but according to nearly all experts, Corona is largely harmless. Sooner or later, the majority of people will catch this virus, most of them will have a sore throat and runny nose for two or three days and that's it! The likelihood of dying from this new disease is very low. In terms of mathematics, it is constantly falling because more and more people are becoming infected - and recovering again. Corona is not Ebola.
But the panic buying of medical protective equipment is developing into the actual health crisis in Germany. Healthy citizens who buy disinfectants and face masks or even steal them from hospitals are the bitter consequences of confused disaster news on all channels and even from the German government. This is dangerous for people who rely on a sterile environment, such as cancer patients during chemotherapy.
Instead of getting a grip of the situation and announcing clear plans, German politicians are blaming doctors and doctors are blaming the politicians! In fact, almost no one foresaw the panic buying by the public. Given the speed and force with which real and false news unfolds on social media today, this is a fatal omission.
The Coronavirus shows that Germany is not prepared for the unexpected. The health minister had to admit that no emergency plans were in place or practiced. Nobody knows how doctor's offices, clinics and emergency services will continue to function when their personnel are in quarantine. Now imagine a virus that is more contagious, more dangerous and more frightening - and this situation seems to be being repeated across most countries in Europe and beyond.
Germany has 77 state-regulated healthcare schemes. The UK has one. The NHS is just downright hopeless at providing routine health care. You can wait two years for a routine operation and maternal death-rates in childbirth are over 50% higher than in Germany - but just this once I am glad that the NHS exists.
A national crisis requires a national health system!
