An employee shows a swab for a corona test at a corona swab site.
(Photo: dpa)
In a novel about the rampage of a pandemic, this would perhaps be the most telling scene: While the German President, deeply worried, formulates his request to the population to restrict social contacts, 50,000 spectators at 1.FC Köln are crammed together to watch the game against Mönchengladbach and move in later Keep celebrating.
But other scenes would also have a good chance of becoming the most indicative of the failure in corona policy: While Covid intensive care patients are being flown to hospitals that are not yet overcrowded, the vaccine is already running out again. And while Austria and the Netherlands are going into full and partial lockdowns, German politics has just taken the legal option of a nationwide lockdown.
A bit unrealistic, so much state failure at once, we as readers would probably judge. Especially when the old and the new government repeatedly blame each other in the transition of power.
The new coronavirus variant called Omikron, of which it is not yet clear how much more dangerous and contagious it is, hits a country in Germany that is already overwhelmed with the delta variant. Who lost the orientation in fighting pandemics in the power vacuum after the federal election.
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Admittedly, Germany was in good company in the summer of this year: politicians, managers and stock exchange traders had practically checked off Corona. Largely vaccinated populations in the industrialized countries meant the greatest possible recovery from Covid, so the hope is.
The fact that other parts of the world were far from it was ignored. The financial markets played out post-pandemic scenarios. Great Britain announced the “freedom day”, the FDP also demanded it in Germany.
Politicians were too preoccupied with the effects of the general election
But if it was right to question the restrictions of freedom in the course of the Covid vaccinations and to discuss more democratically legitimate ways, it would have been time to change course in pandemic management at the latest with the persistence of the vaccination quotas in Germany and the first dead vaccinated people in nursing homes. But politics was too preoccupied with the effects of the federal election.
Whatever impact Omikron will ultimately have, the political decision-makers should now use the discovery and dissemination of the variant as an opportunity to act quickly and jointly: Prime Minister, old and new government should coordinate immediately and not only on the agreed December 9th. A virus doesn’t stick to political schedules.
Large events are not only prohibited in the most heavily infected federal states. The compulsory vaccination in clinics and nursing homes must be decided. The SPD should quickly appoint the new minister for health. A broad political consensus is needed. First in short-term emergency management – and then in the debate on how we can prevent us from surprising us again and again after Omikron Pi, Rho or Sigma.
More: These are the plans of the vaccine developers in the fight against Omikron