That is not the case. Otherwise, with regards to the war in Ukraine, Germany wouldn’t get this singled out when it comes to criticism.
In fact, one of the biggest domestic criticisms of the government right now is their terrible communication strategy.
English is the lingua franca and as such Anglo media has an incredible amount of power in shaping opinions in the West.
And frankly, the reporting, particularly from Anglo and Eastern European media, has had a heavy anti-German bias for weeks now. (Up from the usual moderate bias)
I don't think this contradicts their point... Others can be more powerful, but most of the time those more powerful aren't attacking them. The rest of the time Germany's PR is good and working...
I would measure the efficacy of PR as the difference between perception and reality. The amount people are disappointed by revelations demonstrates the extent of that difference. Germany has always been like this and the disappointments are recent. I would say that the Anglo-sphere has better PR, it is an essential part of maintaining an empire, but people tend to know that the Anglo-sphere is highly active in PR so it comes as less of a surprise.
The whole argument hinges on the claim that 35% of electricity in Germany is generated by gas. This seems very high and I couldn‘t find a source for this claim in the article.
According to [1], it‘s 14% (for consumers). This includes a large number of CHP (combined heat and power plants), which produce district heat and cannot be replaced with nuclear power.
Then there‘s 36% of industry usage , of which 1/5 [1] is used for power generation in industry power plants. I‘d assume that quite a few of these on-site power plants do other things too, like CHP, and cannot be replaced with nuclear power.
Ignoring this, it’d be
14% + 36%*21% = 21,56% of total Gas used for power, in reality, much less would be replaceable with nuclear.
The EU economic think tank Bruegel claimed [2]:
A technically and politically difficult decision to delay the closure of German nuclear power plants in operation until the end of 2021 could free up another 120 TWh of gas
Germany used 945,3 Twh in 2020[3], of which 94,8% was imported[4] That’s 816,14 Twh.
In 2020 55,2% of the imported gas came from Russia [5], so 494,7 Twh.
So, according to Bruegel, a respected European think tank, Germany could replace 24,3% of the Russian gas it imported in 2020, if it managed to re-open its power plants closed in 2021. (the ones put out of use years earlier are being demolished[6]
In 2021, Germany got 55% of its gas from Russia (the rest from other European countries). Depending on how much overall consumption can be reduced, European suppliers might be able to cover most/all of it.
European suppliers will also be busy covering all the other increased demand inside from Europe [0], the demand that most people tend to forget when they act like Germany is the only country dependent on Russian energy, and resources, imports.
It's also not as easily replacable as "Just go to the other gas supermarket down the street", infrastructure needs to exist and support such supply chains.
"Habeck said imports of Russian oil now accounted for 25% of German imports, down from 35% before the invasion, and gas imports have been cut to 40% from 55%. Russian hard coal imports were down to 25% from 50% before the invasion."
>As of October 2020 Tesla comprised 18% of 2020's global market [1]. Still the clear leader, and almost the only contender in the US, but globally other automakers are threatening their lead.
Worth noting that VW owns Audi and Porsche, so according to those statistics, VW made up 12% of the EV sales last year. They’ve been catching up quite a bit.
>Tozinameran[1] (INN), codenamed BNT162b2 and more commonly known as the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and manufactured and distributed by Pfizer
>While global headlines tend to lead with Pfizer's involvement, Şahin insisted to Spiegel: "It is our technology."
It bothers me how Americanized the Western media has become. If Biontech was a US company and Pfizer was European, exactly 0 US media would call it the „Pfizer vaccine“. Yet most European media outlets have adopted the US-spin and now call it „Pfizer Vaccine“ (or „Pfizer-Biontech“ at most).
> In a series of interviews over more than seven months, senior Pfizer executives and other managers shed new light on how the vaccine project took shape.
Reading the article, it doesn’t look like the spoke to anyone at Biontech.
> BioNTech simply plugged the genetic code for the spike protein into its software. On Jan. 25, BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin designed 10 candidates himself.
Ah yes, the Germans simply plugged it into their software. Disregard over a decade of fundamental research done by hundreds of scientists with hundreds of millions of Euros in funding. Now let‘s focus on all the hard work American pharmaceutical Managers did.
>To assemble its mRNA production network, Pfizer used its own money and didn’t take any from the federal government. Executives said they didn’t want to give agencies outside the FDA more leverage over the design of the trials.
>In September 2020, the German government granted BioNTech 375 million euros ($445 million) for its COVID-19 vaccine development program at a time when Pfizer funded its portion of development costs without government funding.[20] BioNTech had also received 100 million euros ($119 million) in financing from the European Commission and European Investment Bank in mid-2020.[21]
Also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/pfizer-va...
And speaking of „Operation Warp Speed“: Coincidentally, „Light Speed“, the name Biontech gave its vaccine development effort, started in mid January. A time when almost nobody had even heard of the virus. Operation Warp Speed wasn‘t announced until April 29, three and a half months later.
I don’t know for sure, but I think some of this is up to the reader’s interpretation.
> BioNTech simply plugged the genetic code for the spike protein into its software. On Jan. 25, BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin designed 10 candidates himself.
When I read this, I didn’t take it as dismissive of BioNTech but more (1) a brilliant demonstration of the technology they’ve developed and (2) admirable that the CEO is still in touch with the underlying research.
I completely agree. It's sad and disappointing to see this being labelled as Pfizer vaccine when it's actually the BioNTech vaccine. But I guess that's what you get when one company has a massive marketing department and the other doesn't.
Pfizer isn't even the only company distributing it, Fosun does the distribution is China...
I think it is record time, as I understand it if this vaccine (and many others) had been under the regulatory regimes in those jurisdictions they would have been ahead of that pace as well. As far as I can tell the 1st phase of the Spunik V trial was injecting everyone in the building where they were developing it and fully half the participants got a fever from the vaccine:
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)31866-3/full...
(The fever thing I don't think is actually a big deal, but is certainly not desirable if you want people to take a vaccine!)
The vaccines in question mostly got out ahead of their production capacity anyway too, so the difference is not consequential.
> fully half the participants got a fever from the vaccine
A mild fever, with one participant getting a moderate fever. Very small sample size, so it's not clear how that compares to the Pfizer vaccine. That appears to cause severe enough fever on occasion (~0.1%) that "who pays for the rare precautionary hospitalizations?" could be a very a real issue in countries like the US without public health care. The % of temporary side effects reported is significantly more than most other vaccines.
As you say, the fevers are probably just temporary side effects of the immune response and the supermajority of people recover very quickly (~24hrs or less). But it is an issue that needs monitoring - the trials really aren't that big, so it'll take quite a bit more data to know if those vaccines are safer than covid itself for the not-at-risk population.
Edit: Someone corrected me, I quoted the survey wrong. But here‘s another source (YouGov survey, 2012), saying that 43% had a real tree and 17% an artificial one: https://statistik-dresden.de/archives/5195
> Also, I don't know anybody here who has a fake plastic tree - these aren't really a thing here, basically people either don't have a tree at all, or they get a real one.
The question has to be translated as "Could you imagine using an artificial tree" or maybe "would you consider using an artificial tree", not "do you prefer an artificial tree".
30 min/weekday a science journalist talks to Christian Drosten, a world-renowned expert on Coronaviruses, who explains things in a very concise manner. Yesterdays episode was „We have to protect the elderly“, where Drosten talked about the high risk for the sick and elderly and trying to fully get this point across to his own father over the weekend. He also mentioned that we should work on hopefully achieving a broader societal awareness of this over the next week or two.
I talked to my mother and father a bit first, sent my mother a link to this episode and told her to put me on speakerphone. We then listened to it together and discussed it a bit afterwards. I found this to be really helpful.
My mother was in denial until 2 weeks ago, when she went a bit hysterical for a day and has been concerned (but okay) since. My father was mostly in denial until today. He also bailed out soon after the podcast ended, because it was a bit much for him. But overall he took it quite well and is taking it more seriously now.
Overall I am very happy with the way this went. Sorry, this isn‘t very helpful if you don‘t speak German. But maybe you are able to find a similar thing in your native language.
