Das Covid

Before they start asking me if everything is okay: yes, everything is okay, because I am vaccinated twice and I have an appointment for the third one. Ditto for the family. So I honestly don't give a damn about what's going on around me, except when gyms close and I can't go to Judo and Degen's (latest passion) (a rapier-like sidearm).

But what is happening around me? What happens is that politics is messing up an altogether simple problem, that is, a problem that with Merkel in power had been dealt with well.

As in the whole world, infections started to rise with the winter, but this time there are two problems.

• older Germans are virtually all vaccinated.
• about 60% of adult Germans are vaccinated
• young people have hardly been vaccinated.

this is not due to vaccine unavailability: at its peak, the German health system vaccinated one and a half million people a day, approximately. Italy three times. So they have no excuses. And if today you go to the Süsseldorf train station and go out on the opposite side to Adenauerplatz, there is its beautiful station where you arrive, without reservation, you get vaccinated and they give you the certificate to stay at home two days from work. End.

So I said, they have no excuses. Why didn't they get vaccinated? Because after all, even with the crown, the countermeasures were not so unpleasant after all. What do I mean? I mean that there have been very few deaths (we have not yet reached a hundred thousand, while a country with twenty million fewer inhabitants, Italy, has 140,000) and therefore many have taken it easy. As if that weren't enough, free test stations are everywhere, and they are PCR-type spit tests, so spit in the jar and in 10 minutes they'll give you the answer. They don't put the Taj Mahal in your nose, in short. Furthermore, many hope that the measures will continue.

• almost everyone liked teleworking. Let's face it.
• the story they here call "3G" (vaccinated, cured or tested) seemed to work so far.
• almost everyone liked teleworking. Let's repeat it.
• the unvaccinated are almost all from the lower and less educated social classes.
• the restrictions are very tolerable, in the sense that you can do almost anything.

Moral: out of simple laziness or ignorance there is a mass of young people and poorly educated people who have not been vaccinated. The maximum concentration is in the east, where many still speak Russian because they studied it at school, in some areas of Bavaria and BW where they have had immigration from the east (where they understand Russian and read newspapers in Russian) and from Russia . This suggests that there has been misinformation, which is why Russia Today has closed, but in any case too many German-Germans are still without vaccines.

Having said this, it would be simple: it would be enough to tighten the restrictions for those who do not have the vaccine, as in Austria. But here comes politics.

There are two possible coalitions with the current numbers. One is the Groko (ie again CDU and SPD) and one is the Ampel coalition (traffic light) which contains Greens, SPDs and Liberals (FDPs). Liberals are the equivalent of a group of "Tea Party" fanatics, and they don't want to hear about restrictions on individual freedom.

The result is that the party that is still in government (provisional) while the program is being defined, the CDU, hopes that Ampel will break up, in order to form another Grand Coalition with the SPD. What does it have to do with Covid?

It has something to do with it because the FDP fanatics in parliament are blocking any restrictive measures. Lockdown? We don't talk about it. Close restaurants or shops? Absolutely not. Compulsory vaccine? Vade Retro Satan! FDP has been shouting "nein" in parliament for weeks.

What happens then? It happens that the provisional government with the CDU is convenient for the liberals to behave like this, because they tell the country (and SPD):

"Do you really want to rule with these fanatics?".

And if we take into account that FDP is ALSO against various ecological reforms (which already irritates the greens enough) it becomes irritating. And big words begin to fly:

And already very important newspapers such as the SZ begin to find the FDP fanatics too "intrusive":

In practice: the government still has the powers to deal with the pandemic, but the new parliament is (since the “Semaphore” coalition should take power) blocked by the liberals.

For the CDU it is a precious opportunity, because both SPD and CDU could say (with or without the greens) that FDP is a party of irresponsible fanatics who do not want to do anything against the fourth wave. And with that, reform the Great Coalition.

Consequently, with the excuse that they are the outgoing government, they are doing less than they could and letting FDP become, in the eyes of the public, the party best left behind, even at the cost of having to digest a new Grand Coalition. .

The problem, therefore, is not of a health type: returning to work at full capacity (1.5 million vaccinations a day), the 30 million Germans who are missing the roll could be vaccinated before Christmas (also because many are students high school and therefore can get vaccinated at school, where there is always a doctor) but FDP, of course, says no to any request that the government makes to citizens.

Moral: the problem is not health, the problem is political.

But as I say, I personally don't give a damn: I'm vaccinated, I'll keep vaccinating, and if anyone breaks, Darwin is doing his job. This epidemic is an opportunity never seen in the last century to get rid of thousands of idiots, and to remove their genetic make-up from the local pool. What do you do.

The annoying thing is that I hope I can continue playing sports. But anyway, even when the gyms are closed, those of FDP will say “nein!”.

And so the CDU plan might also work.