BERLIN – Susan Tabbach seems to be drinking water. She works full-time and cares for three young children at home during the downfall, while worrying about her elderly parents, who are not vaccinated.
She is less likely to be relieved. “I’m tired,” says a one-year-old architect from Aachen, a German town near the Belgian-Dutch border. “I just want to know if my parents are safe.”
Europeans of all ages, from children to grandparents, are fed up with the crisis that is now entering its second year and its end is approaching the horizon. Vaccination is progressing at a glacier pace, Kovid-19 cases are re-emerging and increasingly popular people are imposing new bans weekly.
The combination of pessimism, resignation and anger contradicts a sense of optimism elsewhere in the West, especially in the U.S. And the UK, where vaccination is progressing very fast and the focus is shifting towards reviving the economy.
A surprising case of change of fortune is that Germany did well in the country in the first phase of the epidemic last year, and the authorities were doomed to keep infections and deaths low. Now, after four months of massive ineffective lockdowns and with a slow and bureaucratic vaccination regime that has not yet picked up speed, the infection is on the rise again and the government will see a drop in its voting ratings.
.
