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> The generosity and solidarity [...] have been missing in Germany’s response to poorer European nations in the south, which were hit hardest by the virus. Ger

by s9w 7y ago

> The generosity and solidarity [...] have been missing in Germany’s response to poorer European nations in the south, which were hit hardest by the virus. Germany gave away many hundreds of respirators, took in hundreds of patients from all neighboring countries (including Italy). Italy was offered money under the ESM which they didn't want. All while high ranking officials from Italy called Germans Nazis multiple times. All that although the Italian population has a higher median wealth, lower taxes, higher rate of home ownership and lower retirement age. And we're still the bad guys.

zigzaggy 7y ago
American here. This is the first I’m hearing anything but good things about how Germany has handled this crisis. And I consider myself to be fairy tuned in. Don’t sweat the trolls, you’ll never make them happy.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  FYI you just called the majority of Italian media and politicians "trolls".
  - plorkyeran 7y ago
    I'm fine with calling the majority of media and politicians from every country trolls.
    - chasd00 7y ago
      I regret that I have but one upvote to give. This whole experience has further disillusioned me to the news media and the idea they contribute value in any way whatsoever. At this point, I trust Twitter more.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    How do you think they generate revenue?
danielrpa 7y ago
American here, I can only dream of the United States having a response as good as Germany's. Your country is an example of a how a democracy should react in a situation like this and demonstrates that we don't need a totalitarian regime to handle a large scale crisis. I'm not saying it is perfect (what is?), but just that it is one of the free countries setting a strong standard.
- JPKab 7y ago
  To add to your point, Germany actually has a federalized system similar to what the United States has. A key difference in this specific scenario was that the United States didn't fully trust the federalized system for healthcare and disease prevention like the Germans did. Our CDC ended up owning the development, manufacturing, and distribution of test and therefore were able to tell doctors in all 50 states who could be tested and who couldn't. I think that this is a grossly inferior model and we should have instead allowed the states to have more money and therefore more control over creation of the tests. I think that the big issue that was exposed was not lack of centralization but too much of it with the wrong organizations. A nation of 330 odd million is much harder to govern especially in a centralized manner. an additional question I have is what do you think has been so awful about the United States response? From a pure numbers perspective I feel like the US isn't really doing badly from a per capita basis. Nobody has run out of ventilators yet. Infection rates are below the 95% confidence interval of the original models. Just curious as to your perspective. Do you think that these numbers are due to bad models and luck or due to the fact that the population has largely adhered to social distancing?
  - danielrpa 7y ago
    I don't want to get into partisan politics, but the US central authorities weren't serious about the problem until relatively late in the process, and our testing ramp up was also very slow. The move to block travel from China was well timed, but it can arguably be seen as more influenced by geopolitics than health concerns. The US now is catching up fairly well as the country started playing on its strengths, such as the extremely strong industrial base, financial power and, for better or worse, international leverage. Regarding the more centralized system, it has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of Germany's central coordination is that it made generally good decisions from the get go, so the country was able to move quicker. The US had a confused central response and the states were able to implement local fixes that prevented the entire system from falling apart. So I think the US model has the advantage of offering a second layer of defense from poor central planning, which perhaps wouldn't be as easy in Germany (I'm speculating here, I don't know much about Germany democratic guards against bad central decisions).
CaciaraAsAServi 7y ago
As a Lombard I second this. I always joke about the love-hate relationship between Italy and Germany (Italy and Germany in the broader sense, not only the actual countries) saying that this feeling has been here since the times of general Stilicho [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilicho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilicho].
- majewsky 7y ago
  > since the times of general Stilicho Slightly off-topic, but you want to write "General" with a capital G in this case because you're referring to a concrete general. I had trouble parsing your sentence because I took "general" to be an adjective.
  - CaciaraAsAServi 7y ago
    TIL! thanks! my native language is more tolerant with capital initials than English :)
FlyingSnake 7y ago
I feel you. I think the media (especially US media) has latched onto the doomsday side of this pandemic, and it's easy to sell panic porn. Please ignore the trolls. As a Berliner, I've had the chance to see the German response from the frontlines. I've never seen such socially responsible citizens. Every once in a while my friends and family from US/UK/Asia etc call and ask me what's the secret of Germany's success. The response from German govt. was perfect in such situation, you can't help others without securing your position.
KarlKemp 7y ago
Meh... it’s a bit of both. Nazi comparisons are just annoying now, and people outside Germany tend not to realize how much of a faux pas they are, triggering reflexes of both “I’m sorry” and “Go fuck yourself”. OTOH the help was a bit lackluster, especially at the beginning. I’m not sure about the “hundreds” of patients —- it’s probably closer to 100 than it is to 1,000 especially when only considering Italian patients. In any case it’s fairly symbolic considering the scale of this in Italy. The cause of all this was probably bad timing more than any unwillingness to help. As Italy was most in need, cases in Germany were also growing explosively. There was probably just too much going on, and too much uncertainty to easily part with resources that might be needed rather soon.
- s9w 7y ago
  The sky was falling according to everyone. People and politics were scrambling and panicking. And we still gave away all these resources. Italy's north in particular isn't a third world country. We still helped with all this, and it's considered lackluster? Can you imagine a reversed situation - when Germany would ever beg for help for anything? I don't understand why these expectations exist so naturally.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I am surprised at this statement of Italians having a higher median wealth, I guess that must all be the older generations since the last decade at least is all about how poorly the younger generations are doing - do you have a source for this assertion? Also in the case of the ESM I guess you are accurate that they were offered money that they didn't want, but you didn't note why they didn't want it, which I guess is probably important https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-esm/italy-calls-for-unconditional-use-of-euro-bailout-fund-to-ease-virus-hit-idUSKBN21B2UX https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-...
- s9w 7y ago
  The conditions of the ESM is more or less the entire point. They were offered the money they need - with some guards attached. But they wanted more, and not just borrowed but entirely given by the EU (=Germany). With no oversight. And they got that by calling Germany Nazis. That's despicable.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    > but entirely given by the EU (=Germany) So the EU equals Germany?
    - _0ffh 7y ago
      Yeah, they got caught in a bit of hyperbole there! Yet, if you take the 2017 budget [1] for example, nearly half of the net contributions (excluding the UK) were paid by Germany. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48256318 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48256318
    - s9w 7y ago
      It's not gonna be 100% Germany, that was hyperbole of course. But it's going to be the overwhelming majority, as it all too often is.
  - wz1000 7y ago
    > not just borrowed but entirely given by the EU (=Germany). You can't have a workable monetary union without a fiscal union. Germany wouldn't have such a big surplus if its exports weren't massively boosted by the southern states depressing the exchange rate of the Euro. Unions require unity, and if Germany feels like its pulling more than its own weight, it can exit. But you see exactly the opposite, Germany (at least nominally) states that its goal is to preserve the union, and this betrays the fact that the union brings massive advantages for the German economy. It is not out of a sense of benevolence and european solidarity, but of pure self-interest. Well, if Germany and the North want the union to survive, they will have to treat it like a real partnership and respect and recognize the contribution of their other partners. The current "solution" of bailing out Italy and Spain with even more debt on the condition of further future austerity will only lead to further instability, unemployment, discontent and financial ruin when the debts come due. It is not a question of "solidarity" with the South. It is a question of whether the North recognizes the contribution of its partners to the union, and whether they can act in mutual self-interest to save it.
krona 7y ago
many hundreds of respirators I assume you mean ventilators since it would be fairly insulting otherwise, especially when considering Germany's knee-jerk reactions to the initial outbreak in Italy.
- s9w 7y ago
  knee-jerk?
lbeltrame 7y ago
> Italy was offered money under the ESM The ESM has historically some bad reputation in my country, mainly in relation to Greece (I'm aware the ESM did not exist at the time, but most of the comparisons are drawn to that in our media). The government did not want it, or so they said, but in the end signed the agreement anyway (although I don't know if they'll ask for the money or not).
paganel 7y ago
Ask the Greeks why Italy didn't want the ESM money (hint: it comes with forced privatisations and foreign imposed austerity). > All while high ranking officials from Italy called Germans Nazis multiple times There has never been a serious discussion in Germany about its failed post-WW2 denazification programme, history got in the way. Just yesterday I was on the wikipedia page of the first commander of the Gestapo, a certain Rudolf Diels, only to learn that immediately after WW2 he led quite a peaceful life, perfectly integrated in the German state institutions: > After 1950 he served in the post-war government of Lower Saxony[3] and then in the Ministry of the Interior, until his retirement in 1953. Like, what the hell? Even on the economy side you've still got BASF and Bayer happily doing business of hundreds of billions each year, while suffering almost no economic repercussions as a result of their role in WW2. One of the few Germans from the public sphere that I know of and who really wanted to confront this problem head on was Heinrich Böll. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diels [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll
- leipert 7y ago
  > There has never been a serious discussion in Germany about its failed post-WW2 denazification programme, history got in the way. I am quite skeptical as to „never“. The example you give is an infuriating one and there are too many of those. But that there has been no discussion about de-nazification is simply not true. In academia the topic definitely has been dealt with. See for example this article by the Centre for political education [0] which I consider an example of making this available to the public. Also these efforts didn’t happen in a vacuum, Europe and Germany was in ruins, the allies wanted to wrap them up as well. Ironically the Sowjets were more drastic than the Western allies with their efforts, and we’ve ended up with a second totalitarian regime in Eastern Germany. They’ve even re-used the concentration camps. Anyhow. I remember talking about this in school and critically discussing the History of Germany in the last century. We must not forget, we must not repeat. [0]: https://m.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/dossier-nationalsozialismus/39605/entnazifizierung-und-erziehung https://m.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/dossier-nati...

by s9w 7y ago

zigzaggy 7y ago

American here. This is the first I’m hearing anything but good things about how Germany has handled this crisis. And I consider myself to be fairy tuned in. Don’t sweat the trolls, you’ll never make them happy.

skrebbel 7y ago
FYI you just called the majority of Italian media and politicians "trolls".
- plorkyeran 7y ago
  I'm fine with calling the majority of media and politicians from every country trolls.
  - chasd00 7y ago
    I regret that I have but one upvote to give. This whole experience has further disillusioned me to the news media and the idea they contribute value in any way whatsoever. At this point, I trust Twitter more.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  How do you think they generate revenue?

danielrpa 7y ago

American here, I can only dream of the United States having a response as good as Germany's. Your country is an example of a how a democracy should react in a situation like this and demonstrates that we don't need a totalitarian regime to handle a large scale crisis. I'm not saying it is perfect (what is?), but just that it is one of the free countries setting a strong standard.

JPKab 7y ago
To add to your point, Germany actually has a federalized system similar to what the United States has. A key difference in this specific scenario was that the United States didn't fully trust the federalized system for healthcare and disease prevention like the Germans did. Our CDC ended up owning the development, manufacturing, and distribution of test and therefore were able to tell doctors in all 50 states who could be tested and who couldn't. I think that this is a grossly inferior model and we should have instead allowed the states to have more money and therefore more control over creation of the tests. I think that the big issue that was exposed was not lack of centralization but too much of it with the wrong organizations. A nation of 330 odd million is much harder to govern especially in a centralized manner. an additional question I have is what do you think has been so awful about the United States response? From a pure numbers perspective I feel like the US isn't really doing badly from a per capita basis. Nobody has run out of ventilators yet. Infection rates are below the 95% confidence interval of the original models. Just curious as to your perspective. Do you think that these numbers are due to bad models and luck or due to the fact that the population has largely adhered to social distancing?
- danielrpa 7y ago
  I don't want to get into partisan politics, but the US central authorities weren't serious about the problem until relatively late in the process, and our testing ramp up was also very slow. The move to block travel from China was well timed, but it can arguably be seen as more influenced by geopolitics than health concerns. The US now is catching up fairly well as the country started playing on its strengths, such as the extremely strong industrial base, financial power and, for better or worse, international leverage. Regarding the more centralized system, it has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of Germany's central coordination is that it made generally good decisions from the get go, so the country was able to move quicker. The US had a confused central response and the states were able to implement local fixes that prevented the entire system from falling apart. So I think the US model has the advantage of offering a second layer of defense from poor central planning, which perhaps wouldn't be as easy in Germany (I'm speculating here, I don't know much about Germany democratic guards against bad central decisions).

CaciaraAsAServi 7y ago

As a Lombard I second this. I always joke about the love-hate relationship between Italy and Germany (Italy and Germany in the broader sense, not only the actual countries) saying that this feeling has been here since the times of general Stilicho [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilicho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilicho].

majewsky 7y ago
> since the times of general Stilicho Slightly off-topic, but you want to write "General" with a capital G in this case because you're referring to a concrete general. I had trouble parsing your sentence because I took "general" to be an adjective.
- CaciaraAsAServi 7y ago
  TIL! thanks! my native language is more tolerant with capital initials than English :)

FlyingSnake 7y ago

I feel you. I think the media (especially US media) has latched onto the doomsday side of this pandemic, and it's easy to sell panic porn. Please ignore the trolls. As a Berliner, I've had the chance to see the German response from the frontlines. I've never seen such socially responsible citizens. Every once in a while my friends and family from US/UK/Asia etc call and ask me what's the secret of Germany's success. The response from German govt. was perfect in such situation, you can't help others without securing your position.

KarlKemp 7y ago

Meh... it’s a bit of both. Nazi comparisons are just annoying now, and people outside Germany tend not to realize how much of a faux pas they are, triggering reflexes of both “I’m sorry” and “Go fuck yourself”. OTOH the help was a bit lackluster, especially at the beginning. I’m not sure about the “hundreds” of patients —- it’s probably closer to 100 than it is to 1,000 especially when only considering Italian patients. In any case it’s fairly symbolic considering the scale of this in Italy. The cause of all this was probably bad timing more than any unwillingness to help. As Italy was most in need, cases in Germany were also growing explosively. There was probably just too much going on, and too much uncertainty to easily part with resources that might be needed rather soon.

s9w 7y ago
The sky was falling according to everyone. People and politics were scrambling and panicking. And we still gave away all these resources. Italy's north in particular isn't a third world country. We still helped with all this, and it's considered lackluster? Can you imagine a reversed situation - when Germany would ever beg for help for anything? I don't understand why these expectations exist so naturally.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I am surprised at this statement of Italians having a higher median wealth, I guess that must all be the older generations since the last decade at least is all about how poorly the younger generations are doing - do you have a source for this assertion? Also in the case of the ESM I guess you are accurate that they were offered money that they didn't want, but you didn't note why they didn't want it, which I guess is probably important https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-esm/italy-calls-for-unconditional-use-of-euro-bailout-fund-to-ease-virus-hit-idUSKBN21B2UX https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-...

s9w 7y ago
The conditions of the ESM is more or less the entire point. They were offered the money they need - with some guards attached. But they wanted more, and not just borrowed but entirely given by the EU (=Germany). With no oversight. And they got that by calling Germany Nazis. That's despicable.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  > but entirely given by the EU (=Germany) So the EU equals Germany?
  - _0ffh 7y ago
    Yeah, they got caught in a bit of hyperbole there! Yet, if you take the 2017 budget [1] for example, nearly half of the net contributions (excluding the UK) were paid by Germany. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48256318 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48256318
  - s9w 7y ago
    It's not gonna be 100% Germany, that was hyperbole of course. But it's going to be the overwhelming majority, as it all too often is.
- wz1000 7y ago
  > not just borrowed but entirely given by the EU (=Germany). You can't have a workable monetary union without a fiscal union. Germany wouldn't have such a big surplus if its exports weren't massively boosted by the southern states depressing the exchange rate of the Euro. Unions require unity, and if Germany feels like its pulling more than its own weight, it can exit. But you see exactly the opposite, Germany (at least nominally) states that its goal is to preserve the union, and this betrays the fact that the union brings massive advantages for the German economy. It is not out of a sense of benevolence and european solidarity, but of pure self-interest. Well, if Germany and the North want the union to survive, they will have to treat it like a real partnership and respect and recognize the contribution of their other partners. The current "solution" of bailing out Italy and Spain with even more debt on the condition of further future austerity will only lead to further instability, unemployment, discontent and financial ruin when the debts come due. It is not a question of "solidarity" with the South. It is a question of whether the North recognizes the contribution of its partners to the union, and whether they can act in mutual self-interest to save it.

krona 7y ago

many hundreds of respirators I assume you mean ventilators since it would be fairly insulting otherwise, especially when considering Germany's knee-jerk reactions to the initial outbreak in Italy.

s9w 7y ago
knee-jerk?

lbeltrame 7y ago

> Italy was offered money under the ESM The ESM has historically some bad reputation in my country, mainly in relation to Greece (I'm aware the ESM did not exist at the time, but most of the comparisons are drawn to that in our media). The government did not want it, or so they said, but in the end signed the agreement anyway (although I don't know if they'll ask for the money or not).

paganel 7y ago

Ask the Greeks why Italy didn't want the ESM money (hint: it comes with forced privatisations and foreign imposed austerity). > All while high ranking officials from Italy called Germans Nazis multiple times There has never been a serious discussion in Germany about its failed post-WW2 denazification programme, history got in the way. Just yesterday I was on the wikipedia page of the first commander of the Gestapo, a certain Rudolf Diels, only to learn that immediately after WW2 he led quite a peaceful life, perfectly integrated in the German state institutions: > After 1950 he served in the post-war government of Lower Saxony[3] and then in the Ministry of the Interior, until his retirement in 1953. Like, what the hell? Even on the economy side you've still got BASF and Bayer happily doing business of hundreds of billions each year, while suffering almost no economic repercussions as a result of their role in WW2. One of the few Germans from the public sphere that I know of and who really wanted to confront this problem head on was Heinrich Böll. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diels [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll

leipert 7y ago
> There has never been a serious discussion in Germany about its failed post-WW2 denazification programme, history got in the way. I am quite skeptical as to „never“. The example you give is an infuriating one and there are too many of those. But that there has been no discussion about de-nazification is simply not true. In academia the topic definitely has been dealt with. See for example this article by the Centre for political education [0] which I consider an example of making this available to the public. Also these efforts didn’t happen in a vacuum, Europe and Germany was in ruins, the allies wanted to wrap them up as well. Ironically the Sowjets were more drastic than the Western allies with their efforts, and we’ve ended up with a second totalitarian regime in Eastern Germany. They’ve even re-used the concentration camps. Anyhow. I remember talking about this in school and critically discussing the History of Germany in the last century. We must not forget, we must not repeat. [0]: https://m.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/dossier-nationalsozialismus/39605/entnazifizierung-und-erziehung https://m.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/dossier-nati...