Again not a strong man that some Germans want so much. Who takes action and closes the bulkheads, even before Christmas. What the two Social Democrats, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, presented as measures against Omikron sounds a bit like “Wash my fur, but don’t get me wet”.
With the exception of sports and dance events, from December 28th the restrictions will be limited to private space, which no one can control anyway. Any encroachments on freedom before the festival were probably completely avoided in consideration of the Christmas business and the fear of loss of popularity, driven by the coalition partner FDP, whose own ranks have been torn apart by the debate about mandatory vaccination, and who says that there will be no new lockdown.
The cacophony of contradicting announcements does not help to calm the mind. There is a council of experts whose composition according to professions is questionable anyway, and whose advice politicians refrain from giving advice at the first opportunity. Then one of its members, the head of the Robert Koch Institute Lothar Wieler, leaves, don’t care about the consensus and openly challenges Karl Lauterbach. The latter, in turn, is still able to conclusively explain the supply situation for the vaccine.
In general, the man is an example of how the function makes the man: From the cassandra of the republic, he has mutated into the guardian of the coalition peace within a very short time. If he sat in the opposition, he would frolic in the face of the brakes that the Omikron government is trying to use to parry. Even if he now pushes, there would be “no red lines” when fighting it.
The idea of how devastating the new mutant will actually be is currently left to model computers and is pure speculation. Because we do not even know how widespread Omikron is in Germany, let alone something about its effect, almost all reliable data still come from South Africa with its younger population that has largely recovered before the infection.
In London, it can take an hour for an ambulance to arrive
It is possible that the illness he has caused is much milder than with the previous variants. However, the fear that many people could be infected and quarantined at the same time and that the systemically important infrastructure would be threatened cannot be completely dismissed. It is reported from London that it can now take up to an hour for an ambulance to arrive.
Seen globally, humanity is currently being subjected to another major experiment. In the Netherlands, drastic measures, in Germany the familiar image of the federal patchwork quilt and in the USA almost no fire on the virus: you will always only see from the end how high the price was for which decision.
What is characteristic of the debate in Germany, however, is that – as was the case with the vaccine last year – compulsory vaccination is now declared a lifeline. We should have learned that the virus is faster than even top German research and that we will always chase after the hedgehog.
The German Ethics Council has now fueled this discussion on the compulsory vaccination with a statement that is rumored in the media as approval. But if you take a closer look at the vote, only 13 of the 24 council members are in favor of a general vaccination requirement, seven are in favor of differentiating this and restricting it to particularly vulnerable groups, for example, and four are against compulsory vaccination. So it is only a very small majority.
We will not get Corona out of the world even by compulsory vaccination. That statement is as banal as the realization that we will not get a grip on the virus in the vaccine-bunkering western hemisphere. And whether it escapes a Chinese laboratory or, more likely, the result of an out-of-balance ecosystem, it reminds us that we are not just its victims.
.