It's that time of year again: People on social media are unsettled by a lockdown (of whatever kind).
Admittedly, when have we not been unsettled in the last few months? Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, when did we really know what is now allowed and what is forbidden? There was no need for speculation about a lockdown.
At the end of March 2020, quite early in the Corona pandemic, the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said “Soon each of us will know someone who has died of Corona.” This sentence was quickly modified in popular parlance and for many people it now reads: “Soon each of us will know someone who no longer knows our way around.” A little macabre (if you think about the original sentence), but quite understandable given the many loopholes, special rules and federal differences.
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Incidentally, the situation does not become clearer, but rather it feels more and more difficult to keep an eye on the more attempts are made to get the virus under control with small twists and turns.
Why are churches and religious communities exempt from certain rules, but in restaurants there is already a mask requirement on the way between the seat and the toilet? Why is it that in Austria you are not allowed to consume alcohol within 50 meters of a restaurant after the curfew, but you can open your can of beer again from a distance of 51 meters?
And now all the lockdown scenarios. Since yesterday it has been clear for Germany: November brings with it severe restrictions (at least: you don't have to go through the month in an ugly way, the hairdressers remain open).
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Anyone who had planned their annual vacation for November (for whatever reason) must have drunk themselves into a coma out of frustration. Apart from that, I also canceled my holiday with my parents over the Christmas holidays early.
Lockdown and lockdown fantasies
We've had the whole summer now. If you look at the curve of the daily infection numbers, May, June and July were real showcase months. Of course, there have always been warnings that the fall would bring problems, but now we are on the threshold of having those problems right in front of us.
What can we do? Now a little “Mimikama” comes into play. We can certainly negate the virus and the problems surrounding Covid-19 disease. We have known this phenomenon since the beginning of the corona pandemic. But denial does no good to anyone, especially not to those who present legitimate criticism of corona measures.
Legitimate criticism. Yes, of course this is important. We definitely have to be careful that there is no mass panic. The symbol of diffuse fears is probably the sale of toilet paper. Dear friends of the toilet paper hamster: Is your fear really that one morning you'll be sitting in the house and won't be able to wipe your poo?
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Therefore, an important motto is “prevent and/or reduce fears”. One way to prevent fear is to create knowledge. If you know something about a topic, you are less afraid. Myths, on the other hand, create fear. They create images of the enemy, dehumanize the images of the enemy and cause attacks.
But politics can also create fear. And enemy images. Unfortunately, that is what happened. We remember the “Balkan vacationers” who are said to have “brought the virus in” again. At the same time, harvest workers and slaughterhouse employees from Eastern Europe, who lived and worked in very small spaces, were again tolerated.
It's just this constant balancing act that always leaves you shaking your head. On the one hand, certain professional groups have to accept extreme restrictions (for example, someone with artists or EPUs), but on the other hand, exception rules suddenly appear for similar sectors.
You can clearly see that Corona measures always contain political motivations and certain lobby interests. If your lobby is large enough, measures can take a long time.
The state of affairs
The current situation is just a balancing act between saving the economy (whatever that ends up being) and reducing the number of infections. This is exactly what makes decisions that are not always understandable and that can also be criticized.
A restaurant that has been following strict rules for months and has had to enforce more and more measures will now be closed completely as part of the “lockdown” measures in Germany in November (if you can call that a lockdown). Schools, on the other hand, in which significantly more people stay over a longer period of time, remain in attendance. Ventilation will do the trick!
You can see the growing dissatisfaction of many people who are showing increasingly less understanding due to these different measures. Totally understandable. Discontent is growing and the solidarity that was still present in the fight against the virus in the spring has evaporated. Sayings like “light at the end of the tunnel” seem more absurd than ever before.
Of course, all of this plays into the hands of populists who see their moment! People have been calling for the overthrow of the government since yesterday. To date, these have certainly mostly been marginal phenomena that have been given a big stage beyond their pure social media relevance through clever staging (also and especially on social media).
But what if people who have been following all the rules for months, through increasingly stricter measures, including a lockdown, simply feel that they have been treated unfairly? When you get the feeling that things are going to be okay at some point?
This is also one of the big questions buzzing in my head right now. As this article is being written (11:45 a.m., October 29, 2020), the great sword of Damocles is hanging over our heads in the form of a rumor that a nighttime curfew will be announced in Austria at 2 p.m. ( compare ). Maybe between 9pm and 5am...or 11pm and 6am. We don't know exactly, social media is abuzz.
This then raises the question of proportionality and, above all, legality. But the latter would then have to be clarified by lawyers (which I very much hope!). For my personal sense of freedom, the limit would definitely have been exceeded here, but that is of course debatable.
The question, however, is: Quo vadis, corona measures? Of course we all want to prevent people from getting sick and dying from Covid-19. But we all want to keep our jobs and not fall into poverty. And in the end, of course, we also want to protect our basic rights. Freedom. Freedom of movement. Freedom of choice.
Corona presents us as a society (also internationally) with a major test. Not everything will work out the way we want it to. Decisions are not always made in the spirit of real containment, but are also subject to political and lobbying interests that cause discontent. There will continue to be blinders, false prophets, suppressed possible solutions and, above all, decisions that seem senseless. And maybe lockdowns too. There is no end in sight yet, as to how long it will take until (and whether at all) everything goes back to the way we knew it before Corona. Proclaiming light at the end of the tunnel is rather nonsensical. Personally, I remain more pessimistic.
Or to put it in the words of my little godniece: “Everything is stupid because of Corona anyway.”
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )