For the second time, politics is shutting down Germany.
Culture, sport, gastronomy, travel industry - it affects all of them indiscriminately, no matter how big the contribution to the infection process is.
Will the citizens put up with the mallet method a second time?
A comment by Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
So now is happening what, according to statements by politicians, business leaders and citizens, should never have happened: Germany is entering the corona standstill for the second time.
The politicians call it a “lockdown light”, but it sounds like a mockery to millions of people struggling for their professional existence.
Restaurateurs, hoteliers, cultural workers, fitness studios who have put a lot of effort into developing and implementing hygiene concepts: Their suffering, sometimes also: their dying continues to save the lives of others.
It should be a “breakwater lockdown”, but as long as no fully developed vaccine is available, the third, fourth, and fifth waves will come after the second wave, maybe for years to come.
Spain and Italy fail precisely with this approach.
And then?
The medicine prescribed by politics has such serious side effects that its permanent gift is as catastrophic as the virus itself. Postponed operations, endless loneliness, robbed educational opportunities and lost happiness in life also claim victims.
New lockdown due to Corona: focus on protecting the old and the weak
Scientists working with virologist Hendrik Streeck are rightly calling for a new strategy that focuses the resources in the fight against the pandemic more on protecting the old and the weak than on contact tracing, and that differentiates them instead of shock freezing the whole country.
We have to learn to live with the virus: This includes rapid tests for old people's home visitors as well as the expansion of neighborhood help, separate (Sunday) days for shopping only for seniors, and for the boys not to have parties before they visit grandma and grandpa.
It is also worthwhile to look to more successful LStfräker for protection from countries that rely more strictly, sometimes mandatory, on the mobile phone warning app.
This is not a license for the active generation.
It depends on their willingness to take responsibility.
But the attempt to achieve this with a rhetoric of fear was unsuccessful.
Streeck and colleagues rely on a “command culture” instead of panic and prohibitions.
But that's also part of honesty: In the end, we have to endure that people die of Corona.
As with many other diseases.
It cannot go on like this, the Chancellor said with a view to the high number of infections.
Unfortunately, the same applies to the Merkel-Söder lockdown policy.
