DWe can confidently consider the third Corona year to be a happy one, even if the end of the pandemic is only felt at first and the rational majority in the country rightly remains alarmed. The “catastrophic situation” on the children’s wards that doctors are currently lamenting because of the swelling respiratory infections certainly did not arise independently of the Covid 19 crisis, but it is also not a harbinger of a new, severe corona wave. Because the virus itself has entered a downward spiral. It keeps mutating and multiplying, but it’s more or less going in circles evolutionarily. Immunologically, this is the chance of a lifetime.
Omicron, the variant that has become dominant this year, is actually proving to be the epidemiological stroke of luck that many experts had hoped for, despite the initially rapid spread and great uncertainty. However, there is no guarantee that it will stay that way. And that means that health policy is extremely challenged. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, who was promoted practically synchronously with Omikron, was showered with a firework of good advice from his own Corona expert council, which should do one thing above all: to finally act in a forward-looking and uniform manner.
The system should be turned upside down
That was, you have to admit without any cynicism given the still precarious situation of the health authorities or the shameful digitization in the country, a great fantasy, one with eternity potential. The healthcare system, of all things, which was already familiar with the state of pandemic fatigue long before Corona, should be made crisis-proof overnight. That’s how the minister tried to sell it. Even more: The tired system should be turned on its head while the fear of new waves and variants was circulating.
An adaptive health system was promised, finally more resilience, i.e. resilience. These are all ideas that have become buzzwords in politics in the Omicron Year. But for now it’s just words – like the “upward spiral” that Lauterbach has promised as the next step after the current “downward spiral of health institutions”. The fact is: When it comes to health, SARS-CoV-2 has caused a historic step backwards. The excess mortality has not been eliminated in the third year, many people die too early with (and from) Omikron because the campaigns do not reach them, the economically devastating long-term consequences are still unmanageable, and the social injustices in health care worldwide are at most being addressed more strongly , unsolved.
All of this is now being disregarded against the background of the omicron downturn. How is accounted for too early at all. The meanwhile virulent longing for the old normality harbors the risk of missing out on the chances of a new normality in dealing with such catastrophes. It is not the innovators and experts who are endangering progress in health, but the continued terror of disinformation by those who are trying to use “alternative” facts to politically undermine a scientifically sound and ethically acceptable way of dealing with future pandemics. Even with Omikron it stays the same: the virus is the enemy, not reason.
