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Impending second Corona summer: I refuse to cancel my summer vacation now

2021-02-09T17:58:19.938Z


Until recently, I thought this summer would be the biggest pandemic enforcement party of all time. That was nothing. On the other hand: what would we be without the principle of hope?


Icon: enlarge

Longing for summer, sun, the Mediterranean: Camping holidays in Croatia

Photo: welcomia / Getty Images / iStockphoto

Recently at home school: My daughter was supposed to find out on the Internet how many kilometers the Hamburg S-Bahn runs underground.

Finally no math problem that triggers bad memories of your own school days!

I was therefore very keen on the matter (apart from the fact that, of course, the emails were piling up on my work computer at the same time; but let's leave that).

Google spat out a wrong result when searching, you had to be very careful and research carefully to discover the correct number.

What drove me as a substitute teacher to a sermon inspired by my terms about the difficulties of finding truth on the Internet.

A few hours later, the idea that there could even be a clear answer via network research vanished completely into thin air.

It was about a not entirely incidental question, one that should be bothering quite a few people in the world: When will the pandemic actually end?

In other words: when will we get our life back?

Google, can you answer briefly?

The amount of contradiction that arises when it comes to the next few months is surprising.

Couldn't google, it was clear.

I wasn't seriously expecting either.

But the amount of contradiction that arises when it comes to the coming months is surprising, especially when you look at it not as a doctor but as a father in the home office.

An interview with the virologist Melanie Brinkmann read almost as apocalyptic as the script for the doomsday blockbuster »Armageddon«.

With the difference that this time the happy ending is canceled because Bruce Willis has messed it up so badly.

Elsewhere I read that we could forget about summer anyway.

All measures are not well thought out, too slow, too ineffective.

At the same time, Horst Seehofer would also like to have his hair cut again and advocates opening hairdressing salons.

I actually once thought it would work now.

Not like clockwork, with a lot of problems and delays, of course.

But basically: Now vaccinate more slowly than expected, then vaccinate faster and faster, then enough people have been vaccinated - and bye, Corona, goodbye.

Was that so naive now?

Quite frankly, the reason for my increased interest in the summer months is not just the deep-seated longing for more light, lightness and the fattest pandemic forcing party of all time.

I also booked a vacation.

No air travel, where are you thinking?

But three weeks in Croatia, camping.

Glamping.

What can I say?

After that, at the beginning of January, the booking was a little light in the corona darkness.

Of course, I made sure that I can cancel it.

I'm used to it, last year I already canceled this vacation.

Now even in my closest family there are people who look differently into the future, who hope for more important things than the next vacation.

The Corona threatens quite differently due to age or previous illnesses and who would be happy if this threat finally subsided, even without travel plans.

Not to mention the millions of people for whom this pandemic is an existential problem.

That makes hoping for a vacation seem selfish.

So shouldn't we talk about it in the first place, especially in public?

On the other hand: the thoughts are there and I shouldn't be the only one bothering them.

Not continuously and centrally, but in the back of your mind.

In addition to all the other voices that are constantly racing through our brains, worries about grandma, about the café next door, about jobs and children.

And the rubbish also has to be taken down.

Our story breaks down into many possible narrative threads

If things go well, we form a story out of the polyphonic chorus of our thoughts in which we at least try to be actors.

But not running well right now.

We can only act ourselves to a very limited extent, and our story breaks down into many possible narrative threads.

It is all the more tempting to imagine what it would be like if “the Internet”, “the media”, politicians or researchers could tell us where we are going in the near future.

They try that too, but this choir sounds as atonal as the one in the head.

No picture can be put together from the information we can collect.

Despite everything, that's a good thing.

It would be better to have many contradicting voices, between which I have to weigh, than the one that sets an authoritarian line.

This is the live edition of democratic opinion-forming.

We have to find the way through the contradictions ourselves.

A challenge even in normal times.

Sometimes just impossible.

Although: Quite as imponderable as I want to persuade myself, the matter is not at all.

Ms. Brinkmann doesn't say what I want to hear, but she gives what many scientists estimate exactly.

I'm actually grateful for her clear voice.

Still, I haven't canceled my summer vacation yet.

Call it self-deception.

Or hope.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-02-09

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