Lots of debate in Germany about a huge #covid19 outbreak with 1500+ cases linked to a Tönnies meat processing plant in Gütersloh. A lot of important things being discussed, but it feels a bit like main takeaways are getting buried. Big picture:
1. The virus is still here and it‘s not going anywhere. As soon as we give it an opportunity to start spreading again, it will do so. The uncomfortable truth is: We may get tired, but the virus doesn’t.
2. We increasingly understand settings that carry the highest risk for spreading #covid19 widely. We need to do what we can to prevent infections in these places and investigate every case where that fails, like Tönnies, to understand why it failed.
3. There will be more clusters like this. The key is to react early and aggressively and that means in particular that politicians have to bear the risk of being accused of overreacting. Otherwise we will see more local lockdowns to rein in large-scale transmission.
4. Having to deal with individual localized outbreaks is a good problem to have. We have to desperately avoid getting back to a situation where the virus is spreading widely with no chance of keeping track of it. Just look around the world.
