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Chancellor Merkel: The pandemic is a natural disaster
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
We bob.
We dawn.
The recently tightened measures against Corona leave the feeling that too much is not changing.
A little less school and daycare, a little more home office.
Keep going instead of turning point.
But we have to change something.
As long as we can still change it.
The virologist Christian Drosten says in the SPIEGEL interview that he has bad fears for spring and summer if the number of infections is not reduced significantly.
Perhaps we shouldn't hope for the vaccinations to have any effects until sometime in the fall.
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Sometime in autumn?
Do we really want to do this to ourselves?
At the beginning of the week, the virologist Melanie Brinkmann presented politicians with a simple, well-known strategy called: No Covid.
Don't learn to live with the virus, but fight it hard.
The infection number 0 is not set as an absolute, but rather as a target value.
Idol?
Germany!
By the way, nobody has to look to Australia, New Zealand or Taiwan for role models, but simply to Germany.
In spring 2020, this country was a positive example worldwide in the fight against Corona.
We had the pandemic under control within a few shutdown weeks; in the summer the incidence value was not 0, but below 3. Unfortunately, that was a long time ago.
We are currently at 119.
So we just have to take an example from ourselves.
We can push back the pandemic, Germany has already done that once.
Why are we satisfied with the present twilight state?
Fighting a little virus doesn't help.
The Chancellor said again yesterday that the pandemic is a natural disaster.
Right.
But dealing with this catastrophe is man-made - and that's what matters.
After the success in spring, politics and the population made three serious mistakes, and we are currently making the fourth.
We can't go on like this.
Not until autumn, not even through summer, yes, preferably not until spring either.
First, we all gambled away our lead in late summer, through a thousand small negligence, through parties, trips, family get-togethers.
Second, the EU and the federal government also ordered far too few vaccines during this phase and thus did not sufficiently promote the expansion of production capacities.
Thirdly, from October onwards, prime ministers blocked a tougher shutdown until it was too late.
These three mistakes started the storm we are in now.
And now the fourth mistake: knowing that the British mutation is spreading, we don't fight decisively enough.
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The fact that the Chancellor and the heads of government struggled for a good ten hours on Tuesday for the right solutions can be seen as evidence of well-balanced politics.
But it wasn't.
It was an inappropriate signal.
Where people should have felt: Something new is beginning, the decisive phase is now entering - the only thing that came about was: We'll do it as always, we'll create dozens of exception rules, and some even question the advising scientists.
The messengers were held responsible for the message.
Just one more time: We can't go on like this.
Not until autumn, not even through summer, yes, preferably not until spring either.
Millions of families are at the end of their tether, single parents have long since passed, and children are trapped in a surreal in-between world.
Smaller companies and so-called solo self-employed are running out of steam.
In the cultural business, so much breaks week after week that we never get it back.
Older people wait and wait and wait for their vaccination appointment.
People want their lives back.
Very easily.
If we aim at the 0, then the twilight state ends faster and life comes back faster.
Better four tough weeks with an opening perspective than four more twilight months without a goal.
Angela Merkel said that one had to "slow down the spread in order to get into a better season and to make further progress with the vaccination.
We will see whether that succeeds. "
Sorry, that's not enough.
People want their lives back.
Very easily.
If we aim at the 0, then the twilight state ends faster and life comes back faster.
Not as a strategy and not as a narrative for an effort in solidarity.
We all mocked here last year about the martial French President.
Do you remember?
"We are at war, we are not fighting against an army, not against another nation, but we are at war," Emmanuel Macron said in March.
Yes, very martial.
But the other way around: 50,000 people have died in this country, around 7,000 more die every week.
Isn't that martial?
We will not end this war if we deny it or drag it on and on.
But only if we follow a strategy with which this fight can be won.
And quickly.
Let's have a nice summer.
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