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Politicians don't have it easy with Corona: Measures to contain the pandemic can in retrospect turn out to be wrong or wrongly dosed.
On the other hand, measures that are suitable and targeted can never be clearly identified as such, even ex post.
Simply because the counterfactual, the what-otherwise-happened scenario, remains unknown.
And also because international and historical comparisons are clearly of limited informative value in this unprecedented situation.
Politicians therefore deserve an extra helping of understanding for their student driving courses and braking maneuvers.
On the other hand, no understanding can be expected for corona measures that are clearly premature and disproportionate.
And the measures that the federal and state governments are now implementing are premature, one way or another, in view of the data smoke screen through which we are currently navigating after the Christmas season.
Perhaps in a week we will be on the national average with a 7-day incidence of 200 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with an upward trend.
It is also possible that in a week we will be at an incidence of 100, with a further downward trend.
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These are two completely different scenarios, of which one cannot seriously even say which is how likely.
The current resolutions, however, do not fit either one or the other.
Either they are completely inadequate to bring the target of a 50s incidence within sight.
Or they are completely covered.
Nevertheless, wanting to make preliminary determinations for several weeks at once risks political credibility with sight.
All the more so as a prescribed radius of movement in hotspots, for example, is not a trivial restriction of freedom.
Especially in combination with the plan to regulate private meetings even more, the regulation seems brutal.
Maybe - and just maybe!
- it will prove epidemiologically necessary to further reduce interpersonal contact.
In that case, however, one of the two options is probably sufficient - unless it is clear from the outset that politics cannot or will not really enforce either one.
So here too, credibility is at stake.
And credibility is currently not something that negligently should strain politics even further.
The bad start of the big vaccination campaign destroyed the Germans' late autumn hope that one last big effort, one last big pulling together, in combination with the vaccines, would pave the way for quick and far-reaching lockdown relief.
The citizen has delivered, now it is the turn of politics.
This is how many will see it, despite the high approval ratings in lockdown polls.
And rightly so.