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Intensive care transport in Ludwigsburg (January 2021): For almost everyone it is unacceptable that nobody is to blame
Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
The "lateral thinkers" and we, the normal population plagued by corona, have something in common that may be surprising.
Something that, when viewed up close, is even more uncomfortable - for us.
It is a toxic wish that is becoming more and more urgent on all sides: Somebody must be to blame.
One could argue that humans have always needed and sought scapegoats. But after two years of pandemic and many hardships for many people, any thought seems impossible that guilt is not in the foreground. For almost everyone it is unacceptable that nobody is to blame. It seems downright unbearable that the pandemic is first and foremost about one thing: force majeure. Realizing this and incorporating it into one's own landscape of opinion is becoming more and more difficult for most people.
The question of guilt was central to the "lateral thinkers" from an early stage. This is because conspiracy theories have exactly this function: They construct a group of people who are responsible for what is considered a conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are finger pointing. For the essence of this attitude, "lateral thinkers" and opponents of vaccination only need a single word: Planned chemistry. This play on words is meant to express as briefly as possible that there is supposedly a plan behind the pandemic. And from this it can then logically be concluded that someone must have devised the plan. Which means that the question of guilt has been finally determined by using a single word: There are active perpetrators. And they are so vicious and powerful that they can even plan such a world event.
From the point of view of the "lateral thinkers", almost all facets of the pandemic are guilty: the origin, the spread, the communication, the "intentions" behind it, the measures, the vaccination, the "goal". Bill Gates, globalists, Zionists, Jews, elites, mainstream media, pharmaceutical mafia, anti-democratic conspirators on the way to the “New World Order”, the “Great Reset” or even billions of mass murder - the usual anti-Semitic and often racist guilt pourri. Structurally, nothing of this is really new, but the pandemic was and is the best occasion anyone prone to conspiracies could have wished for. This is how a pandemic transverse front emerged. Groups that would have denied any common ground before Corona are now appearing together. Guilt is the key here, because it connects little or nothing - except for a common enemy,which is the answer to the question: Who is to blame for the misery?
Unfortunately, however, the demand for those responsible has now also manifested itself outside the conspiracy believers and their sympathizers. And with many, maybe almost everyone - I recognize it in myself. Every now and then my emotions slip away from me along with the daily news. Then I can see from my own terms how everything is shifting towards guilt when it comes to Corona. In my mind, "possible shared responsibility" becomes "probable shared responsibility", then "shared responsibility", then "responsibility", and finally "guilt".
A particularly difficult example on several levels: the question of the responsibility of the unvaccinated. Not that I want to protect harsh vaccination critics in any way; on the contrary, I have attacked these people several times and will continue to do so. But not all unvaccinated people are vaccination critics or "lateral thinkers". That is why I think it makes sense to differentiate at this point: Where do unvaccinated people share responsibility and where tend not to?
My emotional state is primarily to blame for the fact that Corona is still there at all, that this wretchedly long, tormenting, continuous pandemic, which consumes waves, has not yet come to an end. The unvaccinated fit in there well. I'm not alone in this, similar thoughts are circulating on social media. Terms such as "pandemic of the unvaccinated" convey exactly that: if only everyone had been vaccinated, the pandemic would long be over. The sheer facts do not seem to allow this conclusion.
Denmark (population 5.8 million) and Portugal (population 10.3 million) are the larger, vaccinated countries in Europe, with initial vaccination rates of over 90 percent.
On January 11, Portugal had 33,340 and Denmark 20,169 newly infected.
If you were to convert that to Germany, there would be hardly credible numbers of 269,000 or 283,000 new infections per day.
Not that such numbers could not be reached in Germany - but obviously even the best vaccination campaigns in Europe did not lead to the end of the pandemic.
It is obviously not enough to project the anger over the persistence of the pandemic onto the unvaccinated.
It follows that unvaccinated people are apparently not solely to blame for the fact that Corona will still exist in 2022.
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And that, in turn, is important to establish because people who have not been vaccinated voluntarily bear a very likely joint responsibility in other areas.
For example, when it comes to the strain on the health system and the utilization of intensive care beds.
According to the currently published state of science, vaccinations only help to a limited extent or not at all against infection with the omicron variant, for example.
Otherwise, experts like Fauci would not postulate that sooner or later we would all get Corona.
But vaccinations reduce both the severity of the disease and, above all, the likelihood of hospital and cemetery stay.
That is why vaccinations and boosters are still a question of solidarity.
We are gripped by a longing for guilt and it is not good for anyone
Again and again, blame can be recognized in everyday corona. Perhaps the most common target is politics. Of course, responsibility is the job of ruling politics, and everything from negligence and wrong decisions to election populism can and should be criticized. In my opinion, criticism can be a little rough. But too often, in the case of harsh criticism, a presumed shared responsibility turns into an unequivocal and supposedly sole guilt. The times of the pandemic are not a golden dream, especially for those responsible for their careers. Even with the worst of will, it doesn't seem to me that the health minister or RKI president have been the most fulfilling and work-life balance jobs in the past two years.In the opposite direction, too, the guilt beam sometimes hits the audience when someone from politics angrily accuses the population. For example, because too few people adhere to overcomplicated, tenaciously communicated rules.
Pharmaceutical companies, the patent system, industrialized countries, or capitalism as a whole are blamed for other things. A common argument: Various virus variants have emerged where greedy pharmaceutical companies or inhumane governments have actively prevented vaccinations in developing countries. My fear is that under-complex lines of thought and the desire for guilty parties come together here too. A number of experts say, for example, that patents are only one detail of a vaccination campaign. The know-how of production, the machines, the personnel, the infrastructure, the scaling - all of this is also part of it and has little to do with patents. There may be good reasons for the vaccine patents to be released.But those who look for the biggest or only problem in the patents and therefore the guilty party in this direction, make it far too easy for themselves.
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Sascha Lobo
Reality shock: ten lessons from the present
Published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Number of pages: 400 pages
Published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Number of pages: 400 pages
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It is becoming increasingly clear that, although definitely not all, but many of the blame are assigned to those who are most likely to be blamed.
And that after two years of pandemic, every straw of shared responsibility quickly becomes the main culprit in particular severity.
Out of sheer, pandemic exhaustion of anger.
We are gripped by a longing for guilt and it is not good for anyone.
Also because it makes it much more difficult to recognize and sanction actually existing joint responsibilities.
And because so many people ignore the crucial factor: the force majeure of the pandemic, in the form of the aggressively mutating nature of this goddamn virus.
Speaking of which, as a half-baked way out, you almost want to become religious - because somehow God is always responsible.
