First-month impressions of Germany in the time of COVID

It's been a month now since we moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Berlin. It's easy to read the news and compare the vastly different per capita COVID statistics by city or region or country, but it's taking me a while to get a handle on what's really going on here.

Obviously Germany is mostly open. Business and schools and many organizations have been busy. I've seen this at street level both in Berlin and in Saxony.

Now I'm trying to reconcile my contradictory impressions. Sometimes it seems people are following the rules quite closely, yet at other times people's safety behaviors vary rather widely.

My insight today is that people aren't actually following the rules -- they're following leaders' interpretations of the rules. Whoever is in charge of a restaurant, a family gathering, or a church sets the norms and everybody else mostly follows suit. Role models are more important than signage.

Meanwhile, as far as I can tell tracking and testing are strong in Germany. I hope that these assets will be enough to prevent the missteps of hyper-local leaders from triggering population-level outbreaks.

Family of seven with small clusters of people walking across the plaza in the background
We visited Königstein Fortress a week ago. Masks and distancing were required for all indoor areas and we saw visitors consistently following these rules.

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