The sad problem about this coronavirus and many other risks everywhere in our world is, that many people simply do not really want to see a problem until it is almost too late.
In German, there is the saying "So lange nichts passiert, passiert einfach nichts!" = "As long as nothing (bad) happens, simply nothing will happen and nothing will change."
These meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses in Germany often employed foreign workers for their hard work in special German "Werkvertrag" - employment contracts, so that they could be hired by subcontractors in their home countries from "companies" who paid them their wages not according to German law but to the law in their home countries, e.g. Poland and Romania. The wages are higher than in their home countries but much lower than in Germany although they are working in Germany. In other words, German social democrats and socialists call this "modern slave labour" and they are not really wrong when you look at the living situation of these workers around the slaughterhouses in Germany where they were working. No German would accept to live and work like that but because they do not know the German legislation and often do not speak one single word German, they accept it. And as usual, many persons could have known about this situation of these workers but no one really complained, because the managers of this German slaughterhouse were very rich, had good relations to politicians etc., etc.
But only now, after two German counties have to go back in a lockdown because of so many of these workers infected in this company, all politicians woke up and a true "shitstorm" is raining down on this manager's family and the responsible attorny of state is busy as never before.
The best German newspapers are now reporting how terrible and irresponsible the top manager ever was and all this is probably correct - but why did no one really remark or want to see something of all these grievances before or years ago?
The titles of the articles about this man are now really tough like this one - even in "Denglish": "Too pig to fail - Anleitung zum Wurstigsein", what means, he was a too rich and too inhuman being similar to the pigs he made others turn into wurst, so it was impossible for him not to have success. Although this title and article is a bit funny and sarcastic, and maybe full of correct accusations, it is also almost a journalistic execution and I would not like to be a member of his family after this appeared in the leading left-orientated German newspaper:
Wenn Sie zu den UnternehmerInnen gehören, die auch während einer Pandemie so hohe Gewinne wie möglich einfahren wollen, dann gibt es einige Regeln, die Sie unbedingt beachten sollten.
www.spiegel.de
But it is hard now in many European countries when the people are too frustrated by the current situation. For example, this woman wrote in Sweden something like "Sweden had too long no real problems and the Swedes were too confident in their allmighty government, caring for everyone in the tradionally best way, but the way during the coronavirus crisis was simply wrong, because the Swedes are not used to make complaints against their government, living too peacefully for two centuries."
Reaction from the left activists, of which she thought to belong to: "Do you want to become a female Hitler in Sweden?" Huh? She was shocked about such hostile reactions in Sweden and now she thinks, Sweden is "stranger" as she thought, because the Danish and the Germans would discuss such statements and afterwards, they are still able to go together into a bar and have a drink. In Sweden, she suddenly has less friends than ever before:
Nach einem kritischen Essay wurde die schwedische Autorin Elisabeth Åsbrink mit Hitler verglichen. Was ist da los im Land des Corona-Sonderwegs?
www.spiegel.de
In fact, we Germans seem to be lucky right now, that there is no real hostility between the leading parties. The leaders of the German parties are very careful in most of their speeches concerning the political opponents and trying never to insult someone of the other big parties, because the political system is of a kind that you possibly once have to form a coalition government with someone who is your political opponent and you cannot really do this with someone you insulted years before personally.
So, all the German political leaders said in March: "OK, we all underestimated how fast this virus arrived Germany and we all made some mistakes - but now it is necessary to work together for our nation and although we do not really like each other in our political thinking, we are united in our believe in science and our best scientists will advise us what to do now the best and we all will try to give all our orders according to their advice! We will not make any accusations right now against each other here in Germany and we try to keep it this way as long as possible."
This is the best behaviour, you can expect from opponential politicians in a democracy, I think.
When you look to other countries, where the governments are instrumentalizing this virus for poltical reasons or where they were or still are ignoring it (Brazil) for a long time and making parades like in Russia or a "referendum" for the life-long presidency of Xyulo - wanted by criminal international court in The Hague in corona-times, the poor and normal people will pay the price for the stupidity of their governments and in the end, the size of cemeteries in all those countries will tell you the truth about these governments and the stupidity of some people everywhere all around the world who think that wearing a mask is more dangerous than not wearing it. Did anyone ever ask them, what they think, why surgeons "traditionally" wear masks during an operation at the hospital?
Before we think about something like "herd immunity", we probably should do or should have done something against human "herd stupidity" before.
