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Not a single new Corona case on site today, none yesterday, none the day before yesterday: The decision to go on vacation to Bad Schandau, to Saxon Switzerland, seems to be the right one.
There was hesitation for a long time, especially since the Saxon state government has banned untested tourists.
The state government of Michael Kretschmer (CDU) cancels this two days before arrival.
Relief.
That was in mid-October, when Kretschmer felt the hotspot threshold of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 7 days was excessively strict.
The virus wasn't really there in the Free State at that time.
But it is already looking through the window, also in Bad Schandau.
Beyond the border, behind the next bend in the Elbe, it is already raging.
That is where the Czech Republic is located, and at that time the Czech Republic already had incidence values of 600, 700 and more cases per 100,000 inhabitants, levels that are only achieved selectively in Germany to this day.
A loss of control that is virtually unprecedented in Europe to this day.
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Nevertheless, 9,000 Czechs regularly come over to work on the Saxon side of the border.
In Bad Schandau they are everywhere, in hotels, in restaurants, in shops.
An integrated, functioning internal market, just like Europe should be.
Source: WORLD infographic
It was an epidemiological age ago.
Almost three months later, Saxony is struggling with an incidence of 304, Germany in total is now 155, and the state government in Dresden is currently selling its citizens a success that only a few corona deaths have to be brought to other federal states for cremation - the crematoria are currently lagging behind.
To this day, no major German politician has spoken openly about what has happened in the meantime.
The second Corona wave started in West Germany, but the wave that came from the Czech Republic to Germany developed much greater force.
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Initially affected - and to this day mainly affected - are districts in the immediate vicinity of the Czech Republic, especially in Saxony, but also Thuringia and Bavaria.
From there the dynamic spilled over to all of Saxony, all of Thuringia and then up to Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt.
Czechs in nursing homes and hospitals
Getting this dynamic under control, with lockdowns and the like, is also difficult because it is constantly getting new food: across the open border with the Czech Republic.
The third wave is now raging there, with an incidence value of 829 the Czech Republic has the second highest 7-day incidence worldwide.
Nevertheless, the cross-border commuters continue to come.
Hotels and restaurants in this country had to shut down, but the need for outside help is all the greater where people live for whom infection with the coronavirus is a particularly great danger: in nursing homes and hospitals.
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Nationwide, a good three percent of people over 80 were infected with the virus - in Saxony, however, it is almost seven percent.
Thuringia and Bavaria are also well above average here.
It's not like nothing is being done here.
Saxony, for example, has been paying employers from the Czech Republic and Poland EUR 40 per night since mid-December, in order to reduce commuting.
However, we know from the spring, when a corresponding offer was accepted for less than ten percent of cross-border commuters, that this does not do much.
Either the Czech Republic gets the situation under control or ...
Otherwise you don't want to make it too difficult for cross-border commuters - you are dependent on them.
Saxony has postponed the introduction of compulsory tests for commuters.
It should come into force next week.
But even then only in a leaner form: Instead of the long-discussed two tests per week, one should be enough.
The Saxon economy was in a storm, as was the DGB (“absolutely disproportionate”).
How companies and their Polish and Czech employees should deal with this in practice is apparently completely unclear even days before the introduction.
After the one big blow that breaks the chain of infection from the Czech Republic, that doesn't sound at all.
So either you are now relying on the Czech Republic to get the wave of infections under control.
But that would mean risking thousands of lives, especially since the dynamism in the neighboring country is currently still completely unchecked.
Or one devises new measures that offer stronger incentives and more protection without turning the already existing care emergency into a care debacle.
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Creative ideas can certainly be found - it won't have to be the politically toxic topic of border closure that has been on the agenda since 2015.
From one placebo measure to another
Why, for example, not quintuple the overnight allowances for cross-border commuters - and pay them out to employees instead of employers?
That would quickly cost a lot of money, but compared to business as usual it is very likely the more favorable solution in every respect - medically, socially, economically, and fiscally.
Michael Kretschmer will probably at least suspect that, and in his apology I can only say that Bodo Ramelow in Thuringia and Markus Söder in Bavaria have successfully kept silent about the topic.
The three Prime Ministers also do not have to listen to calls for action from other federal states, which are quite appropriate in the matter, at least not in public.
Presumably the other rulers who watch over the borders with Denmark, Belgium or Switzerland fear the return coaches that are close by.
And so the discourse continues to move from bans on accommodation and movement radii to FFP2 obligations, from one placebo measure to another.
Apparently, with soon two million infected people in the country and more than 40,000 dead, and the trend is rising, the situation is not serious enough.