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14 days before the festival, the good news comes to the country from the city of Tübingen: Yes, a carefree Christmas with the family is possible, despite Corona! It goes without saying that Boris Palmer is the bearer of the message, the still green mayor whose name causes shortness of breath and rashes in many in his own party, the permanent speaker who spoke head and neck and his own reputation at the beginning of the pandemic when it was analog. He seemed to say: It was not worth all the effort to save Corona’s elders. Anyway, they would die soon.
Now, just before Christmas, the suspicion arises: should Palmer have been listened to better and not interpreted his words with too much malice?
The Tübingen example seems to show how that works; rather, it would have been possible to protect the elderly without shutting down the entire country. The city has come up with a lot of ideas and spent a lot of money: its own shopping hours, taxi calls, free masks for the elderly, many tests for the elderly and the people who come in contact with them. The virus appears to have largely been kept out of nursing homes; the number of people over 75 infected is surprisingly low, as is the number of intensive care beds used.
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It is worth taking a closer look at whether the situation is really that rosy and the credit for this really belongs to Palmer alone. And you probably can’t use a city of 90,000 as a model for the entire country anyway. However, the situation is depressing: while Palmer offers a large number of rapid tests in Tübingen’s market square at Christmas (“And then you can be sure that you will not bring death to your parents or grandparents”), those responsible for Decision-makers in the federal and state governments are asking the first Chancellor, on the occasion of the festival, the decisive battle in the fight against the virus.
As strong as the politicians warned about the “second wave”, they have not prepared the country for it
If you want to save the life of grandmother and grandfather, it is said, moderate, reduce contacts, stay home, even on Christmas Eve. Some even require the strictest contact restrictions on Christmas days, such as New Years Eve. It is an admission of your own helplessness, including your own failure. As strongly as the politicians warned about the “second wave”, they have not prepared the country for it. An example of the flaw is, in addition to the lack of rapid tests, the warning application, which can protect against data abuse, but not against Corona. And now: woe to Christmas!
Kitsch and consumer terror, excluding other religions, just family hell anyway – okay. And yet it can probably be agreed by all sectors of the population that Christmas is the family holiday. The most private party. As much as politicians debate the number of contacts allowed: they can hardly enforce such rules by sending the police to lunch on December 25, counting, punishing and evicting people from the dining room.
People will have to decide for themselves who they will meet at Christmas and the risk they will take to meet a loved one with severe cancer for the last time. Many will try to organize rapid tests privately. And everyone will feel a little lonely for the state.
