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Just before Christmas, of all things, the country should once again fall into paralysis. The chancellor was right. Can the pandemic be contained before January 10?
I am not one of those prudent people who already have all the gifts together. I will fight to get something for everyone on Tuesday before the country comes to a standstill. At Christmas we usually sit together in large groups. This time we will be three, parents and daughter, and we will feel strange. Then New Year’s Eve: without firecrackers, the turn of the year is boring, of course.
What would be the alternative?
But it is like this. It must be like this when people are re-infected en masse every day, when between 400 and 600 people die every day. So democracies have to show humanity and try to contain this nasty pandemic by all means. If a mild lock doesn’t work, then the adjustment, which was decided this morning, is an obvious choice.
Of course, the consequences for our economic life and our culture are fatal. Of course, stagnation and exclusion cause tension in small apartments with many people on one side and the loneliness of people living alone on the other. But what would be the alternative? More indifference or cynicism?
Soon we will miss Merkel
The countries around us are more advanced anyway. Austria or France started to take drastic measures earlier without breaking the second wave. Switzerland, on the other hand, remains stubborn, although the numbers are rising as well. The president, entrenched in the White House, does not care about the monstrous number of infected and dead people because he always and forever only cares about himself and now he praises himself for the fact that the vaccine is there. Absurd special case.
In Germany it’s too early for an obituary, it’s true, but I’m pretty sure we’ll miss our Chancellor as soon as she leaves us alone with the 16 mountain dwarfs. In recent weeks and months he has shown greater clarity and judgment than any of them. If it had been for her, the closing at the end of October would have been less easy and wouldn’t have to be tighter for Christmas of all time.
This strange back and forth
But it does not work. Prime ministers knew better, they didn’t want one thing and they didn’t want the other at all. They wanted to differentiate themselves from each other and handle the pandemic according to their own tastes. This is how this strange swing occurred in recent weeks, which has left the public baffled and, therefore, undermines confidence in the government.
Looking back on this year of the virus, the debate in the Bundestag last week should not be missing, when the Chancellor, contrary to her custom, showed how she felt. Phrases like this are etched in the memory: “If we have too many contacts before Christmas and then it was the last Christmas with the grandparents, then we will have missed something!”
“I believe in the power of enlightenment”
When he said that the pandemic had entered the decisive phase, Beatrix von Storch chimed in, saying that nothing had been proven. The Chancellor reacted pleasantly at first. “You know, that’s the difference. I believe in the power of enlightenment.” She went on to say, “that gravity cannot be overridden, the speed of light and other facts cannot.”
Well shouted. Should have done it more often to fold the visor.
Even among my friends there are those who despise Merkel, whom they consider a mistake from the beginning: all done wrong, for 16 years, a single catastrophe. You also write it in your comments on the State of the Union and in between I thought: there is a business model behind it and not necessarily a conviction. Now I know they mean it.
Ignorance is not an alternative
Either way. I remember what Alice Weidel of the AfD said about it: She rambled on about the “bag of tricks of the authoritarian government” that locks up citizens and, moreover, she indulges in “climate protection hysteria.” In closing, he said in the tone of the organ of evil: “Get out of your spiritual Wandlitz!” In any case, this advanced ignorance is not an alternative to government policy. German triumphs.
Markus Söder once said that every politician must be measured by how they deal with Covid-19. Sounds good, it could also be right. It also applies to him. Bavaria does not have the highest number of cases, but it has the highest number of deaths: 4,848 as of last Friday. The Bavarian Prime Minister has just admitted that the slight lockdown since late October was a mistake. After all.
The mnemonics came from Söder
It’s easy to tell of him that he loves conciseness and seeks the grand entrance. That is correct, but that is not all. The audience frees him from the tireless effort to meet the challenge. The motto for today’s press conference came from him: Bergamo is closer than some thought. All or nothing, that’s the alternative.
Medical, police and military personnel in Ponte San Pietro Bergamo, Italy, in March: The northern Italian city has become the symbol of an out-of-control pandemic. (Source: Carlo Cozzoli / Fotogramma / imago images)
North Rhine-Westphalia has the highest number of infected people, not surprising since it is also the largest federal state: 314,937. Which brings us to Armin Laschet. He will tell you in January what his party thinks of his crisis management. Then it chooses the new president who has at least one right of access to the chancellery. Those familiar with the inner workings of the CDU currently see Friedrich Merz ahead.
Is this supposed to be good news? And for whom? Good that we have this chancellor for a while. The pandemic does what it wants to us. How long more? Nobody knows. On January 10 we will take stock again.
From now on, the principle of hope applies even more than before. From now on we will live in two worlds. In a world we are shocked by the records of deaths and infections and we hope that the blockade can break the second wave. In the other world, we will soon be queuing at vaccination centers to get vaccinated against the virus.
Good luck! And: stay away from the virus!
