Open Thread, also Hamburg Fail

You guys like open threads I guess: the last one was among my most popular posts.

The black line in this chart is Hamburg, OK? It tracks 7-day average Corona incidence per 100k residents of every German federal state.

When the government withdrew wide-scale pandemic restrictions, two states elected to keep them. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the city-state of Hamburg were the two geniuses who invoked the sad “Hotspot Rule” (it is actually called that) to maintain masking and other hygiene harassment like testing requirements after 2 April.

TO SAVE LIVES. DO YOU WANT OLD PEOPLE TO DIE? ARE A YOU A MONSTER?

As a result, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern diverged from the rest of Germany in their astrological observances, and we had a natural experiment.

How did this turn out, you ask? Have these wise, far-seeing states defeated Corona?

lol no.

It has been a total rout for the Corona astrologers. After a few weeks of nothing, a court finally overturned the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern restrictions, to the enormous relief of the idiot politicians who insisted upon extending the measures there. Happily, no such fortune smiled upon Hamburg. They started out well below the average German SARS-2 incidence, and while cases have declined everywhere in the Spring weather, they have somehow declined less steeply in super-cautious hypermasking Hamburg, such that this city of extreme forethought and unfathomable prudence now has considerably more cases than average. Tail between their legs, Hamburg have decided to let their hotspot restrictions expire.

We fight on the side of truth and beauty. The gods make fools of our enemies.