Day 16

The situation in Germany is still critical. The numbers are showing that the infection rate is slowing, however the number of infected is over 71000 in Germany. The number of deaths is at 775. The Robert-Koch-Institute warned that the number of deaths will rise. Although Germany has implemented lockdown measures it is still too early to tell if they are working. The RKI also reinforced what they have said weeks ago "We are at the beginning of this crisis." Bavarian minister president, Marcus Söder, added to this saying that no one should be thinking about relaxing, the situation is still quite serious.

The situation is also quite serious in the US. My home state of Maine has also decreed a shelter-in-place order. This is a smart move and it will save lives in the LONG run. The goal of these decrees is not to stop the virus, but to slow it down. Time needs to be won. Researchers need more time to develop and test a vaccine.

In Franconia there are 3686 infected cases with over 60 deaths. For some reason, my source for these numbers has stopped reporting the number of deaths for Franconia, instead they list the numbers for each county.

We still have plenty of toilet paper.

Stay safe everyone.

Day 15

Not a whole lot of news to post today. The infected cases are at 3459 in Franconia with 45 deaths. The weather today was sunny, but very cold, near freezing. I think the weather is helping keep people at home. If it would be mid May or June it would be a different story.

Strangely enough, HomeOffice is starting to feel like the norm. I'm usually the first one up in the morning here, so I can get a pot of coffee brewing and take the dog out before the others emerge. Everyone knows what they need to do. It does suck not seeing people, but this too shall pass.

One thing that I have noticed so far with this self-islation is that there is more time to learn new things. We live in a time where we have access to all kinds of information. YouTube is filled with so much stuff on just about any topic. If you want to start a new hobby, this certainly is the time. I really look forward to the bee season, more so this year than any other year. The videos I posted on Facebook and on YouTube have been well received, and I figure, why not share my experience and knowledge with the world. Last season I had a hard time staying motivated with the apiary, it just felt kind of boring with the same-old-same-old. Hopefully this will get me going.

Day 14

3180 infected cases in Franconia, 35 deaths. In Germany 60,659 with 482 deaths. It was announced yesterday that the Bavarian lockdown will continue until the 20th of April. This was the date that was already set forth as the date when kids can go back to school. I doubt that even then, that the lockdown will be lifted. We should be seeing in the next two weeks if the infection curve is truly flattening out or not.

I also received an email from Expedia today that our flight to Boston for the 6th of April has officially been cancelled and that we will be getting a raincheck from Lufthansa. It was inevitable and I was going to cancel the trip anyway. It is what it is.

We still have toilet paper.

Day 13

Today marks one week of the Bavarian lockdown. We went shopping today at Norma to get some things for us as well as th ein-laws. The parking lot wasnt very full for a Saturday. A lot of people were also walking into the store wearing medical gloves. We even saw one man enter the store wearing what looked like a dust mask. Nobody is willing to take any risks.

The weather was wonderful today and I encountered a lot of hikers when I was walking home from the in-laws house. Fresh air and sunshine is so important right now. I also took the opportunity to check on my bees. Everything looks good.

As of this writing there are 2796 infected cases with 33 deaths in Franconia. To get a little more local, in Forchheim there have been 61 reported cases with 1 death. Germany has 56202 infected with 403 deaths.

We still have toilet paper

Day 12

My thoughts and prayers go out today to my friends and family in the USA. As of today, the numbers in the US are surging past those of Italy and China. As of this writing just a little over 100K infections and 1,543 deaths in the USA. I hope people try to stay at home as much as possible. This virus is no joke and it is showing to have an affect on young people as well.

Currently there are 2508 infected people in Franconia with 27 deaths. Tomorrow will mark one week of lockdown in Bavaria. It really is hard to say if the measures are working to flatten the curve. More than likely we will only really begin to see that impact in another week or so.

Day 11

Today was a pretty good day we all that our daily routines and seems like the infection curve is starting to flatten quite a bit here in Franconia although the reported infected cases are still increasing every day. Yeah, social distancing is going to save a lot of lives.

It is really interesting to me how well it's working out working from home office. Everyday we have stand up meetings and using Microsoft teams and it seems to work pretty well. I guess everyone is working productively and efficiently and hopefully after the Easter vacation things will start getting back to normal with people going back to the office. Not quite sure if kids will be going back to school after that, we will have to wait and see.

Now the weather has been kind of cold but it got better today and it was nice going on a nice long walk with the dog (toady was the dogs birthday too) and just to get some fresh air to clear the mind a little bit and also getting outside the house is really important especially if you doing self isolation. Get out the house and just stretch your legs and get out in the open.

 We still have plenty of toilet paper.

***********UPDATE*************
1280 Infected cases, with 22 deaths in Franconia

Day 10

A little experiment. I will dictate the entire post with the Google assistant to see what comes out of it. This should be funny, starting now:

So today was the first day that I started to feel a little cabin fever so I went outside took a nice long walk with my dog got lots of fresh air and believe me it's fresh it is really really cold when I got home ma of course I was trying to to work a little bit in home office and all of a sudden it was 4 p.m. so I decided to call it a day day and I shut off my laptop and the kids were also finished with there school assignments so everybody is pretty much finished at 4 p.m. except for my wife who has a teacher has to prepare a lot of things and also has to answer a lot of emails and co-ordinate with other teachers so her work day lasts a little bit longer what I don't understand about this Google assistant which is basically typing everything that I'm saying right now is why doesn't it understands my punctuation there no commas there are no periods there are no paragraph breaks why can't the artificial intelligence actually figure out when I'm making a pause I don't get this make a paragraph make a new line still nothing I have no idea how I'm supposed to do that but ok whatever it was fun to try this out I think tomorrow I'll just update the number of infected cases and deaths because I think I'll probably have to manually type those in and of course you know I can't finish my post without mentioning that we still have toilet paper

This is me typing again. Wow, that worked better than I expected.

********************UPDATE*************************

1897 infected cases in Franconia with 17deaths.

Day 9

Not much new to report today, except that we got Disney+ now, so I wont see much of the kids the next few days.

1425 infected in Franconia, and 13 deaths as of this writing. I will update that number tomorrow morning

********************UPDATE for Day 9***********************

1454 Infected and 14 deaths. The curve is flattening.

It is still too early to know if the lockdown measures are working or not. Yesterday (Day 9) I went to REWE to buy a few groceries and it was pretty empty. The shelves werent empty, but the aisles were empty, not a whole lot of people venturing out. So at least we know that people are taking the lockdown seriously.

Angela Merkel tested negative for COVID-19. This is great news for Germany. The support numbers for the CDU/CSU are increasing tremendously. Many politicians (from all parties) like to run their mouths when everything is going well, but when things get rough it is interesting to see which politicians ACT. Merkel and Markus Söder are two that have done just that, they acted when others wanted to have political debate about what to do. Their actions may save lives.

Yesterday a coworker made me aware of an interesting theory as to why there have been so may deaths in Italy and now also in Spain. The main cause of death among those who are infected by COVID-19 is the bacterial infection that creeps into the lungs. Now, I assume that the normal treatment protocol is antibiotics. However, the bacteria that infects the lungs may be resistant to most broad-spectrum antibiotics in those regions. Why? Because those regions with the highest number of deaths specialize in making a special kind of ham. Ham, huh? Read on.

In order to raise the livestock to produce that ham, the farmers give the animals higher concentrations of antibiotics. Those antibiotics remain in the meat and are transported to humans who eat them. The antibiotics are in trace amounts, but enough, that the bacteria that live in the throat can build up a resistance to them. Sooooo, if those people become infected with COVID-19, and then later are also secondarily infected with the bacteria already living on the throat, the antibiotics will not work.

I found this to be a fascinating theory. What the theory does not explain, nor can begin to prove, is what about the people who are eating the ham outside of those regions. I am not trying to connect any dots here, but I thought it was worth mentioning as I believe there could be some truth to it.

We still have enough toilet paper.

Day 8

Today marks one week that my wife and the kids have been home from school. Everyone is handling the situation quite well. Yes, sure, there is the occasional squabble or bickering contest, but mostly everybody is doing fine.

Working from home is not really a problem anymore. We conduct meetings as if we have always been doing it this way. One rather comical thing however is that when one colleague is speaking into her microphone she ends up sounding like Stephen Hawking. It's really weird but amazingly enough, we understand almost everything she has to say.

The weather is absolutely frigid. You wouldn't believe it by just looking out the window but it is colder than a well-digger's butt. Despite that, we try to go on a short walk after lunch. It is good to get out of the house, as this is still allowed.

Tomorrow Disney+ plus hits the German market. I truly hope that the internet doesn't blow up.

We still have enough toilet paper.

****************UPDATE**************
1289 infected in Franconia with 13 deaths. Statistially speaking, the curve is starting to flatten out

Day 7

Cold front came in pretty hard, but we still went for a family walk this afternoon. Fresh air is really great. Getting some sun on your face is also soothing, so even if it is near freezing, it is worth going outdoors. Since today is Sunday, nobody was doing any homework, except for my wife, who as a teacher, needs to prepare materials for her students.

Tomorrow we will get back into this new routine that we have created. I will try to rise an hour earlier than normal, as the "off-times" have proven to be much more productive. Once most of the colleagues start logging into the company network, things will slow down.

This evening, the news came in that German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is in quarantine after it was revealed that her attending doctor has tested positive for COVID-19. It is not good for a nation's morale when its leader is in quarantine. We are hoping and praying that she will test negative for the virus so she can continue to lead the country.

As of this writing there are now 1,102 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Franconia, with 13 deaths, and 24,582 in Germany with 94 deaths.

We still have enough toilet paper.

Day 6

Today is Saturday, no school. The kids enjoyed a day of lazing around. It is also the first day of the lockdown. I looked out my kitchen window several times today, down into the valley where there is a major road. I counted ONE vehicle today. That is astonishing. I wonder if this will work. I hope this will work. As of right now, there are now 729 confirmed cases in Franconia.

I did do some HomeOffice today just to try to get caught up so that on Monday I can hit the ground running. The connectivity was smooth and fast. It may make sense to tailor my schedule to work outside the normal heavy traffic times I may give that a shot next week.

Cold weather has hit again, so the kids didnt make it out much today. Forecast is temps around freezing until middle of next week. We played a round of Taboo and will most likely make it a routine to play different board games in the coming days and weeks.

We are all feeling fine except that my wife has something bothering her right eye. We called around today for an open eye doctor, nothing. Weekends is normally on-call anyway, so maybe we have better luck on Monday. We really dont want to go to some on-call clinic and have to sit in the waiting room with a lot of other people.

We still have enough toilet paper.

Day 5

Starting tonight at midnight, Bavaria will be on lockdown. This means we can only leave our property if we absolutely must go to a doctor, to a pharmacy, gas station, grocery store, to our workplace, or if we have to walk our dog. It was only a matter of time before it would come this far. This basically came about because people were just being dumb. Retirees were meeting at backeries, cafés, and even hardware stores to chew the fat. Idiots.

HomeSchool is becoming more routine, which is exactly what kids need. They have to learn that even in times like these, the world goes on. I must say, they are handling it well. My wife is also doing better with organization and with evaluating the submitted assignments. Two more weeks and the schools have Easter break anyway. Hopefully, after that, the schools wil begin to reopen.

HomeOffice sucked today as I had to manually copy files from my work PC to my work laptop over Remote Desktop. Some of those files are 2GBs large, that takes a...long...time. I guess I could drive into the office and copy to a thumb drive, but, you know, lockdown.

Cold weather is coming in, which means the kids wont want to go outside. This may pose a problem, because I am sure we wont make it through a lockdown if the kids sit inside all day. This will be interesting.

As of this writing, there have been 664 reported cases in Franconia and 6 deaths.

We still have enough toilet paper.

Day 4

The infection rate of ~33% is holding steady. Currently there are 567 confirmed cases in Franconia and 4 deaths. Get this: people are still being stupid and selfish and are organizing Corona parties. Why do people have to be so dumb? The minister president of Bavaria was fuming, and he should be. Hopefully people will learn real quick.

HomeSchooling seems to be going well. The kids are working everyday to finish their assigments. They are also getting outside more in the fresh air which is always a bonus. It isnt always easy keeping everyone chill, especially in close quarters, but maybe the assignments will help in that regard as well. You cant fight and bicker if your nose is buried in a book. As a pre-emptive reward, I pre-ordered Disney+ yesterday, which will be released here on the 24th. I predict a major outage that day and hopefully there wont be a revolution.

HomeOffice was better today. Connectivity issues are starting to lessen, which means we can work even better from home. I imagine after this crisis, a lot more money will be invested in digitalization. The school systems also need to be revamped to better handle such situations, however unlikely they may be. My wife's email account almost caught on fire due to the heavy traffic of assignments being turned in by her students. To be fair, teachers have never been trained in how to deal with something like this, they deserve much more credit than they are given.

I went out late this afternoon to send out some snail mail and also pick up on some beverages. When I was at the store, the owner told me how he almost threw and old bastard out of his small Mom and Pop's operation. The guy was trying to buy up all the toilet paper. The owner said he saw red and gave him an earful. asking the old codger why he hfelt like he had to buy all the toilet paper when there are families coming in with small kids who might actually have a use for all of it. This is getting ridiculous. Toilet paper probably is edible (unused of course) but jeesh, for what other reason do you need to clear out all the shelves?

Tomorrow is Friday, so I hope to finish work a little early and go check on my bee colonies. I wonder how long it will be before we need permission to leave our houses.

We still have toilet paper

Day 3

Meh. Just meh. The day started off with somewhere around 299 cases, and as of this writing, it is now up to 380 cases in Franconia. That is still an infection rate of around 33%. Not the greatest number, but hopefully it will start flattening out soon.

Kids are doing well managing their school work, which is good because otherwise they would become dumber. If they had their way, they would be watching TV or playing on their tablets all the time, which would effectively turn their brains to soup.

HomeOffice was not so great. Connectivity problems galore. But hey, I guess we arent the only ones. Still managed to have a couple productive online meetings, so we are keeping the boat afloat.

My wife is also starting to get waves of homework assignments to correct. Everyone needs to keep busy.  This is a whole new world, and nothing will test a social education system like being thrust into the digital world.

I ventured out to two stores today. One was the REWE in nearby Ebermannstadt. I picked up some snacks and some tonic water, and the shelves seemed to be full and no signs of hamster purchasing. Then I went to the DM, which is like a drugstore without the pharmacy, and there it looked a lot different. 50% of the shelves were empty. Why in Sam Hell do people need to hoard so much stuff? The fact that two stores are about a mile from each other makes it seem all the weirder.

Weather was nice. I cooked a pork roast outside in the Dutch Oven for lunch, it was fanatastic.The kids played for about an hour in the backyard, and the dog spent almost all day outside. Having warm weather is a blessing but a cold snap is forecast for the weekend. We will see.

We still have toilet paper.

Day 2

I wanted to write this last night before going to bed, but I fell asleep in front of the TV, so I am writing Day 2's update on the morning of Day 3. Currently there are 299 cases with 3 deaths in Franconia. That is an infection rate of 14%. Mortality rate is at 1%. In Germany there are now 9360 cases with 24 deaths

The kids received their first round of school materials for Home Schooling. Home Schooling is not a common concept in Germany, in fact, it is illegal. But, as I often have said around here the past few days, we are in an exceptional situation which demands exceptional measures. Anyway, the 4th grader has been blanketed with a ton of work and the 9th and 7th graders have received relatively little. Not sure how that works.

My wife is also working hard to keep her students busy. One problem is there is ONE central platform that is being used throughout Bavaria to keep the students up to date with materials and assignments. On Monday the platform was shutdown temporarily due to a DDoS attack. Media outlets claimed it was a hacker, but I think it was just 20000 kids trying to log in to the platform at once.

HomeOffice for me seems to be working out well. Luckily Siemens is well equipped to send several people home. What they didnt take into account is that at home there are more distractions, like bored kids and dogs that need to be walked. We will make the best of it, afterall, these are exceptional times.

To that end, yesterday afternoon we took a walk with the kids and the dog down to the playground. When we got there, there was a sign posted on a tree that the playground has been closed due to the coronavirus. Germany is taking containment seriously and I am happy about that. We played a little baseball in a field next to the playground and then headed home. Fresh air and sunlight is so important.

Today, my wife and I will venture out to the local supermarket. Hopefully it wont come to fisticuffs, I will update on this later.

In other news, Tom Brady announced yesterday he was leaving the Patriots. As of this writing, it is reported that he will sign with the Bucs. Ugh.

We still have toilet paper.

First entry, but kind of late - Day 1, no school

Probably should have started this a while ago, but, oh well, here it goes. As of today there have been 218 cases in Franconia with 2 deaths, yesterday it was 161 cases with one death. That's a little under 1%, and those 2 deaths were elderly patients with prior health issues.

Today is also day 1 of a Bavaria wide shutdown of schools and preschools. The shutdown is scheduled to last until the 20th of April. How the hell are we going to keep the kids entertained that long? Netflix better not crash the next few weeks.

Starting tomorrow more measures will be in place to enforce/encourage social distancing such as the closure of museums, zoos, swimming pools, and other things. Stupid stores like boutiques will also close. The goal now is containment. 

I am also working from home for the foreseeable future. This poses some interesting challenges, but it will work out. 

Good news is, the weather is supposed to be nice this week. That means: fresh air and sun, two things that seem to kill germs.

We still have enough toilet paper.

More to come tomorrow.

***EDIT*** Day ended with 243 confirmed cases