Berlin – Making Germany “winterproof” is what these days are all about. The debate is about which measures are best suited to avoiding as many serious illnesses and deaths as possible while still maintaining the balance between restriction and freedom. You compare with other countries. How do authoritarian regimes work more efficiently? Does a more liberal “letting go” cost more deaths, but is more socially acceptable?
It goes far beyond the upcoming “bitter” winter to the all-encompassing question: How will Germany become more crisis-proof in the long term? After 1990 there was the Europe-wide financial crisis, the refugee and climate crisis then had global dimensions. Corona is now affecting everything worldwide at the same time: democracy, freedom, economy, trade, culture, school, studies, work, health, nutrition and so on.
Weaknesses relentlessly revealed
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier hit this point when he said that the pandemic had put the democratic constitutional and welfare state to a “tough and novel endurance test” and relentlessly revealed weaknesses “that already existed before Corona”.
So it is: Our society is much more unstable than expected. The causes include: digitization backlog, weak schools, a health system that is permanently neglected with affluence and a flourishing sector of irrationality. It just takes revenge when shamans and alternative practitioners swirl brains or Waldorf schools are upgraded with state subsidies and globules are ennobled with health insurance funding as being carried out by reason.
The civilian varnish was gone shockingly quickly in the Corona months – just think of the outbreaks of vaccination envy or – as the most recent derailments in both directions – blanket denigration of all unvaccinated persons as well as the fundamentally unjustified resistance to vaccination.
That gives rise to fears of the worst, if things get really bad – and things will get worse. When climate change hits hard and suddenly. When a new, stronger pathogen emerges that a vaccine won’t be available anytime soon.
Germany is not prepared for such scenarios. Before the pandemic, anyone who raised such questions made a fool of himself. People largely avoid problems that lie in the future. But in unstable situations, societies develop a willingness to think about the unthinkable. The years of perceived security after 1990 were times of stagnation in this regard. The scrapped sirens symbolize the carelessness of those years. Individuals could get used to the fact that they can ask a lot from the state without having to back off in an emergency. Today it is considered a human right to damage the common good with one’s own lifestyle. Change in behavior for the sake of the climate? Oh no.
An example affecting many millions of people around the world touches on something very private: food. The people eat themselves dead, say doctors and state statistics. The number two cause of death in Germany is overweight. Those who are much too fat often suffer from cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer.
Anyone who eats too much and the wrong thing and who moves little not only makes their own life a nuisance, but also weakens the entire social organism. He has to expend enormous strengths to help the dead eaters by making ends meet. Obese also make up a strikingly high percentage of severe corona cases. The vast majority of problems could be avoided through understanding and repentance.
Corona is acutely overloading the healthcare system; It is chronically burdened by millions of obesity. Germany must become healthier before the next crisis. First step: courageous license withdrawal for the production of sick food.
A particularly perfidious new product from the witch’s kitchen in the food industry is meat substitute. So that the veggie things look and taste LIKE meat, vegetable substances are mixed with so much sugar, fat, salt and questionable additives that the opposite of a healthy food is created. These days the stocks for a large producer collapsed. Has the consumer recognized the potential for harm? Or does the self-deception continue to work?
The small example shows the size of the task. Too much is going wrong everywhere. Millions of small corrections could alleviate the gigantic, painful major correction forced by the next major crisis. But the prospects are bad.
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