I don't know how to title this post.

When I saw the first photos of people making their own protective face masks or to help out doctor’s practices I immediately decided ‘this is a bandwagon I will not jump on to’. 

Opinions about the effectiveness of wearing these masks differ widely, the WHO says there is not much gained when everybody starts wearing these masks. Basically, keeping other people at a distance (‘social distancing’) is much more effective than any mask, even industrially made ones. This does not even take into account that there are two different types of masks, with highly different degrees of effectiveness.

However, I think for many people it is a psychological thing more so than that it will be effective from a hygienic point of view. 

Where these masks are indeed necessary and effective, however, is in a hospital- or caretaking context, when caretakers have to get close to patients. Nursing through home office is not an option. Elderly people in nursing homes need their caretakers to get close to them, and so do patients who are already in an infectious situation. Here, wearing a mask is mandatory.

Now Austria, Czechia have issued that everybody going grocery shopping has to wear one. I think this is highly irresponsible in this context. Which leads to the fact that everybody will be scrambling for masks which are a highly sought-after item by now anyway. These regulations lead to an increase in scarcity, and make the situation, which is dire already for hospitals and nursing homes, much much worse than it is already.

At work – for me right now: a hospice – we have been asked to bring our own masks because the hospital is running low already. In the hospice, of course, people are in a final phase of life, they are in a process of dieing, but nobody wants to speed up this process through introducing a virus from outside which might well prove disastrous to people with cancer, a reduced immune system or other sever ailments. But I understand very well that the industrially made masks still available to the hospital should be reserved for the wards with infectious situations.

So I made masks this morning. 

At least I got to use the bias-tape-maker I have had for ages and virtually never used -
the real surprise is that I found the box in which they have been waiting for
their - this! - big day.

I dove into the box with shirts mostly.

Part of my production

Enough to last me through two shifts. Then they need to be boiled on the stove or washed at 90 degrees.

And one for my husband and one for my son, should it be that Germany, too, issues the order to wear one when visiting a supermarket. And one for my Senegalese friend, confined to a refugee housing, because where should they get a mask from when they want to go shopping? (Going shopping for them has been made more difficult this month anyway because they did not receive money, but only vouchers which are split up into three for the entire month, in a sum which is higher than they ever go shopping for, but they will not receive any money back ... but that is a different story.)

I really would have preferred to spend today's time at the sewing machine differently. 

A minister in Hesse has probably committed suicide in the context of all this, and the virologist from the Charité, who has been giving vital information via a daily podcast in a highly understandable and serious manner is now withdrawing from the public because of aggressive reactions to his statements, and after having been accused to have caused this suicide. 
Come on, folks. Where are we getting to?

Not in a good mood today!
(I am getting to the point where I hope that this virus will be smart enough to pick out people with a lack of intelligence, social empathy and brain power and go after them. For good.) 

Technological revolution

I have a good sense of orientation. And I love maps. I still hang on to the set of maps that I used when biking through New Zealand twenty years ago (oh my God, has it really been that long?). 

My husband gave me a wonderful new atlas for Christmas year before last, my son’s huge “My fist World Map” is hanging in the kitchen beside the table where we usually eat, and has given us numerous occasions to talk about contries, places etc.

"Southern Germany" in my atlas - we live to the right
(i.e. East) and just a little bit up
from Munich 

Illustrated World Map in our kitchen

And so far we have refused to get a satellite navigation system for the car, which came without one when we bought it.  I strongly believe that the ability to read maps is an extremely important ‘soft skill’ which I want to use instead of being told where the computer thinks I should be going. Of course, the wild stories from the first days when cars are supposed to have ended up on railroad bridges or driven into lakes when the drivers relied on their sat-nav-system too unquestioningly have become fewer in number. But I do already have the impression that people’s sense of orientation, and ability to give directions towards a certain place is going down. So, no, I don't like them.

Nevertheless, my recent trip to the fair in Veldhoven, which I was well prepared for in that I had looked at the map, had taken notes on which cities I would be passing on the autobahn, and on which I did think I knew where I was going, has finally convinced me that having a nav-system is not that bad an idea. When you are driving by yourself, have to wear glasses that are not exactly suitable for reading, and certainly not while driving at high speed, and you don’t want to have to pull over at virtually every intersection (where there is no place to stop) resistance crumbles. And if you are trying to find your way through approximately six thousand autobahn intersections around Cologne, neither of which indicates the town you have taken down and remembered as ‘pass by on your way’, but only the final endpoints of that particularly numbered section of autobahn (which you did not take down), then even a decent sense of orientation does not get you where you want to go. At least not easily, or without considerable delay.

After Veldhoven I had decided that I would get myself a system. Next year, to put it into next year’s balance/calculations. But I did not reckon with the German train drivers. They are going on strike for four days tomorrow – and I was booked to go to Hamburg for a workshop on the weekend, by train, on Friday. Hectic arrangments resulted from this announcement: finding a keeper for my son late Thursday afternoon, when my husband has an appointment that can’t be altered, putting up the appointment for changing the car’s summer into winter tyres. And buying and installing a sat-nav-system. 

Which is currently downloading – taking forever! But I do hope I will be well prepared for my trip tomorrow. And then find my way easily in the city of Hamburg. That’s really what I need it for, because I do know how to get to Hamburg, even in my sleep!