Germany is sliding deeper and deeper into a permanent lockdown.
A breakwater lockdown was promised for November.
Now it should go on like this at least until January.
And the Bavarian Markus Söder is bursting with ideas.
The latest: a ban on cross-country trails.
A comment by Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
You are always smarter afterwards.
The coronavirus has proven too cunning for the breakwater lockdown.
After five weeks of “partial lockdown”, politicians are reacting hectically again.
Now life in Germany should largely rest until January 10th.
At least.
The politicians cannot be blamed for having waived drastic curfews and business closings when the second wave rolled in - unlike their colleagues in other, harder-hit countries.
The failures go back much longer: To date, there are no binding protection concepts for the old people's and nursing homes, into which the virus is currently breaking with force, with unfortunately fatal consequences.
Regular mandatory rapid tests for carers, the possibility of visits only with a preceding rapid test, all of this was wasted in the summer.
Above all, not all teachers in schools were obliged to be able to switch to digital teaching at any time in an emergency, at least for children after primary school age.
Because the politicians left that to the school principals and municipalities, who approached the matter with very different levels of commitment, when the number of infections rose again, the secondary schools had to remain open, which pleased the virus.
For a long time it was said that schools are not drivers of infection.
Today we know: In no age group is the corona virus more rampant than in the group of 15 to 19-year-olds, where the seven-day incidence is currently 186.
That means: 186 out of 100,000 schoolchildren are infected every week.
If you take into account the number of unreported cases, it means that one in 100 older schoolchildren is infected with Corona every week.
All hopes now rest on the school lockdown from December 19 to January 10, i.e. the (extended) vacation.
By then, at the latest, the numbers should drop more significantly than they have been up to now.
One thing is clear: With even stricter and, in individual cases, nonsensical restrictions on people's private life, hardly any further successes can be expected in the fight against Corona.
With cross-country skiing bans and Co. Markus Söder will certainly not be very impressed by the virus.
