Autumn, Tea, Random Ramblings.

It's getting autumny here, with days that are partly golden and super-warm, and days that are more nippy and grey and rainy. Overall, though, it's been rather warm - which has led to the thyme in our not-lawn blooming a third time right now, and the strawberries (yes, the strawberries!) have followed suit and are now blooming. And producing fruit. (More decorative than tasty, though, so you have no reason to be jealous.) The tomatoes in the wintergarden are doing another round as well, and I will be the last person to complain about that.

Things are... strange this year. Really. Apart from the unseasonable blooming of fruit and vegetable plants, we're all in the midst of the much-mentioned and not-at-all-looked-forward-to "Second Wave" now. Well, all of us except maybe Norway and Finland, who are staunchly holding out. (Keep it up, whatever you are doing or not doing!)

Our local numbers have, by now, risen to the "red traffic lights" stage. That's the stage with more than 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 7 days. Measures against the virus spread are supposed to start at the "orange" phase, with 35 incidence or more. However, it looks like these measures (which are mostly contact restrictions and extension of mask wearing rules) were either not followed well enough, or they were unsuitable, or they were too late, as  in quite a few places in Germany, numbers are still rising. So much that Bavaria (hooray federal system!) has now extended the traffic lights to have a "dark red" stage that comes into play once the incidence number rises above 100. Which is the case in several places in Bavaria, and some spots in Germany even have a number above 200.

After the "lockdown" had ended and things seemed more under control, about everyone in politics said that we would be taking measures locally from now on, curbing the spread of the virus in each region. Then there was the summer holidays, and then school started, and numbers were creeping up. Still the prevailing talk was that we would definitely have no second lockdown.
Numbers were going up more, and more, in Germany's neighbouring countries and in Germany. We were nearing the numbers of new cases we had in spring, when the first wave was at its peak. However... what I read was things like "ah, no need to worry, we're testing so much more now than in spring that you cannot compare the numbers, and we're well-prepared, and we have plenty of hospital beds free". Erm... maybe that is the case, but steeply rising numbers and the dynamics of a spreading illness means that we will reach higher and higher numbers? So maybe don't downplay it, but start doing something before it gets out of hand?

But... politicians were reluctant (sort of understandably, but still not very helpful). And so it happened. Now there's suddenly talk of a new lockdown maybe becoming necessary.

It's an unpleasant situation all around; everyone is tired of the changed life, and nobody wants to go back to the restrictions we had in spring (though seeing it realistically, they were not so bad in Germany, compared to many other countries). We know a bit more about the virus now, and maybe that makes us think we're safer than we are; we also remember that the first wave did by far not have as dire consequences as we feared for a while. So how bad can it be, right?

Ah. Well. I'd say... bad? Really bad? Maybe even really really bad?

The not-wanting-to-deal-with-it-yet mindset (or non-action-set) that our politicians have shown seems to be similar in our neighbouring countries. Something very human, it appears - though I'm not entirely sure whether I find that a helpful thought, or whether it makes me doubt our collective intelligence since obviously nobody anywhere has learned anything from the first wave. Jury's still out. Maybe I'll do my judging of humankind's intelligence after the election in the US?

So we're trying to draw back into our little corner of the world for a while, being even more careful than before. We can both work from home, so we're really lucky in that regard. Any other activities are done as much as possible at times and in ways that involve as few other people as possible. It sucks, but I'd rather a bit of suck than an unknown amount of sick, or having someone else fall sick because of me.

The weather today, at least, makes it easy to stay home and curl up in a corner of the sofa - it's grey and drizzling rain. We stay home a lot. We drink tea. We meet our friends virtually (thank goodness for video chats).

So far, we cope. I hope you do, too.