Home office, slowing down, less social contacts - for almost a year and a half this has been the "Corona normality" in Germany, always alternating with relaxation and the hope that the pandemic will end soon.
While many rush into pubs, cinemas or swimming pools before the impending fourth wave, others are more reluctant - and seem to want to remain in their own lockdown.
A phenomenon that generation researcher Rüdiger Maas has also observed.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, his team at the private "Institute for Generational Research" he founded in Augsburg has been asking about the attitude of the population in Germany to the corona pandemic.
In the latest representative survey of 2,210 respondents, around a tenth of people aged 40 and over said they missed certain things from the lockdown times.
Almost seven percent of the so-called Baby Boomers (56 years and over) and around eight percent of the “Generation Y” (26 to 39 years old) would prefer to keep their pandemic everyday life completely.
Fear of accumulation
In times when a lot is possible again, at least temporarily, some people get really scared. Give up everything that you have already adjusted to? A tough idea for some who have come to terms with the pandemic. There are “some people who don't feel like doing it,” says trauma psychologist Karin Clemens from R + V Versicherung. Because of the pandemic, people have been "shot at" incessantly with important but threatening information for more than a year and a half. “Any touch can be potentially dangerous. This information stays in your head - and every time you meet, your finger goes up, ”she says.
Deaths in the family and among friends, bankruptcy of the company, months of isolation: The Corona period primarily deprived many people of the feeling of security.
There was something like that before.
But: "Now the threat has been right at the door for almost a year and a half," says psychologist Clemens.
"And the threat situation still has no end point - see the delta variant."
Younger people are optimistic
Younger people in particular were happy about the relaxation and opening up - to be able to travel again, to study in class or to meet friends at university.
According to a survey by the generation researcher Maas, almost 85 percent of people under the age of 26 are optimistic or even very optimistic about a time after Corona.
"The lockdown affected the generations in different ways, and in my opinion the government left out the needs of the younger generation," says Maas. “The consequences for the youngest are hardest.” This is precisely why they in particular hoped to be able to build on their old reality. But: According to the survey, around 46 percent of this age group also feel pressured to do many things because of the relaxed measures.
It looks a little different with the elderly: "At the beginning of the pandemic, people over 40 in particular had to make sudden changes to their jobs - whether to work from home or to a digital strategy for the company," says Maas. The over 40-year-olds have meanwhile got used to the new way of life and would want to carry them with them to the time after Corona. Despite all fears and worries: According to the generation researcher Maas, many people quickly get used to a new life after the pandemic. Because: "As soon as the direction of the group dynamics changes, we adapt accordingly."