How jaded one has become.

In the morning in the bathroom, during breakfast or in the car on the way to work, the radio news is on and we can almost have a say.

"The health authorities in Germany reported 56,677 new corona infections to the Robert Koch Institute within one day." First, the spokeswoman names the number of infections, then the incidence, then the dead.

The porridge for the child burns on the stove, the traffic light on the way to work turns green.

“According to the new information, 522 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours.” Put on shoes, park your car, next message.

Johannes Pennekamp

Responsible editor for economic reporting, responsible for “Die Lounge”.

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Routine discussions are held about what should not be routine. The people who die “of or with Corona” are often old and ill, so it is said. Those who are even more numb than ourselves say: Many of them would not be alive today even without the virus. 522 deaths in one day, reported by the RKI for example last Thursday. The Airbus 380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world, offers space for 520 people on two decks. One crash every day, no one survived, and some pregnant women were among the victims. The expectant mothers who have not yet been vaccinated are now particularly at risk. Intensive care physicians tell horror stories: the child could be brought into the world by caesarean section, the mother dies. Next message.

It's advent.

But there is no Christmas anticipation.

Just like last year.

And like in the coming year?

A proportionate attack on freedom

Nobody knows. The new Federal Minister of Health is at least spreading hope: "With this house we will manage to bring this pandemic to an end in the next few months," he announced when he took office. Karl Lauterbach is an epidemiologist and health economist, and he makes no secret of how he will keep his great promise. Lauterbach is in favor of a general vaccination requirement. With the original virus variants, you would have got by without such an obligation, he explained to Anne Will's millions of audience last Sunday. But even with the more contagious Delta variant, which is rampant in Germany, probably no longer. "This is all the more true with the Omikron variant."

The Bundestag has yet to decide.

A question of conscience, not a parliamentary group obligation.

Resistance is forming in the FDP parliamentary group, CDU politicians are signaling their approval, and the rest of the traffic lights are anyway.

Omikron will let the number of infections soar, predict the experts, and with it probably also the approval for the compulsory vaccination.

So it could turn out the way the former federal government had ruled it out.

Does it have to be that way?

The compulsory vaccination is an interference with the physical integrity, which we non-lawyers can now ask, see Article 2 of the Basic Law.

That is why some say an attack on freedom.

Constitutional lawyers counter that in a pandemic it is quite proportionate.

Clear announcements were made

This debate could be saved if the vaccination quota in Germany were higher than the current 70 percent of the population.

And if you had previously listened to warnings from those who are familiar with human behavior.