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Mask compulsory inspection in the Deutsche Bahn
Photo:
Sven Hoppe / DPA
The longer the pandemic lasts, the more people yearn for tough measures.
Including me.
The authoritarian temptation is great.
I discover the dictator in me.
I am in favor of compulsory vaccination for doctors and nurses.
I am in favor of providing the Corona warning app with more information, also at the expense of data protection.
I think it's good to use the Bundeswehr to fight pandemics inside, for example in nursing homes and health departments.
And I reply to all Corona skeptics: doubt whatever you want, but damn it, put another mask over your snot nose when you are on the S-Bahn with me!
The dictator in me says: we sacrifice our freedom to defeat the virus.
That is necessary and right.
On the one hand.
On the other hand, it scares me to see how measure and center are increasingly lost.
You can tell by how the terms slip.
For example in the debate about whether people who have already been vaccinated should be treated differently from those who have not been vaccinated.
Actually a matter of course, after all it is about the restoration of individual rights, for example freedom of travel.
But Federal Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht from the SPD rejected this at first.
She said there should be no "privileges for vaccinated people."
Privileges?
Who would have believed that the top German right-wing politician would have such an easy time blowing the liberal hat off her head?
It's great how China controls the virus.
But at what price?
Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow is on the way to self-radicalization.
He falls from one extreme to the other.
At first the corona restrictions went too far for him, lateral thinking light.
Now he would like the whole country to shut down and all factories to close.
The economic and social damage would be enormous.
But at least: equality in misery.
There is an initiative called #ZeroCovid, which activists and representatives from the cultural and media sector have signed, including Luisa Neubauer from “Fridays for Future” and a “taz” columnist who recently attracted attention when all the police officers were thrown in the garbage dump wish.
Now she dreams of a total sovereign state.
The activists are calling for a radical shutdown with the goal of zero new infections.
The procedure is controversial among virologists.
But since #ZeroCovid is partly about the same people who wanted to shut everything down because of the global climate, it probably doesn't matter.
I notice that a lot of people admire China: It's great how the Chinese have brought the virus under control.
Which methods do not seem to matter: Total surveillance of all cell phone data, drones, face recognition, police violence, should that be a role model for us?
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the virus was a democratic imposition.
I don't know what worries me more now: the virus - or the dictator in us.
Icon: The mirror
