The third Corona summer begins. The third Corona autumn will come. The third Corona winter too. Unless it becomes a nuclear one, caused by the world’s biggest scaredy cat. Incidentally, viruses are particularly sensitive to radiation, but as far as the corona virus and its intensive relationship with humans are concerned, nothing would matter anyway. Otherwise actually too.
A few important experts have just spoken out again. They called for good preparation, for caution and consideration, for more effective and better data collection as a basis for more effective and better measures. Many will have felt that as a groundhog moment. Because they had heard all this before about these almost two and a half Corona years. There are other memories as well. We know what we (didn’t) do in the past two summers. We know how, even though they were predicted very precisely, waves kept hitting us. We know who the warners and the pathfinders were. We know how we repeatedly pulled the emergency brake at the last moment and averted the catastrophe. We know how democratic and federal processes often slow down, confuse, make things worse. But we also know – and certainly better now than we did a year or two ago – what we have in this democracy, this federalism, this great freedom.
And even if we may not want to know, we are also very clear who paid the highest price: the vulnerable, who died or suffered greatly, whether from infection or “just” from isolation and fear. Immediately followed by those who kept the shop running in the critical infrastructure from the intensive care unit to the discounter market.
It will happen again. We’ll muddle through. With a lot of experience, antibodies and immune memory cells on the plus side. With corona fatigue and many heads in which a lot is going wrong, on the minus side. With ambiguity as to what variants will try to drill into our lung cells from autumn, on the ambiguity side.
But there is also a new secret weapon: the immunization campaign called the 9-euro ticket, which is strategically just right in the summer months. In the past two years, these had given us orphaned intensive care beds reserved for corona patients, which really shouldn’t have been the case (caution, sarcasm!). The measure is aimed specifically at those who have not yet been vaccinated and who have rejected protective measures. How well it works, what the collateral damage will be, is unclear. But that has also been the case with many things that have been done or not done. And then there is our most important tool: the hope – this time also that the sick will at least be warm in winter and that the vaccines can be cooled.
