Corona autumn: The FDP has time, the country doesn't

How much the standards have shifted.

So far, the summer months of the corona pandemic were considered a time when people could take a vacation from the virus - the warm weather and the open terraces pulled the soil out of the pathogen.

Exactly one year ago, anyone who wanted to find an infected person had to search a long time: The Robert Koch Institute reported that exactly five people per 100,000 inhabitants and within a week were newly infected.

At the beginning of July last year, only 12,000 people nationwide were infected with Corona.

A year and a few virus mutations later, the world is different.

The seven-day incidence is currently almost 700, and the number of infected is estimated at almost 1.4 million.

Summer break from the pandemic?

That was once.

No one can predict how long this will remain so.

The corona virus is an adversary that constantly changes its strategy.

It is quite possible that the pathogen will mutate in a direction that will make far fewer people ill in the future than it is at the moment.

It is also conceivable that the opposite will happen.

On the other hand, there is a high probability that the number of infections will increase again significantly in autumn - just as it has been in the past two years.

The difference is that the republic will not come from a relaxed Corona summer, but from a phase with comparatively high infection rates.

The Advisory Council holds back in case of doubt

Anyone who expected clear instructions for the fall from the 160-page report by the Corona Expert Committee was disappointed on Friday.

The document was long awaited, especially in the traffic light coalition in Berlin and especially in the FDP.

But as expected, the committee remained differentiated in its assessments and, when in doubt, reserved.

Lockdowns and contact restrictions are therefore particularly suitable instruments in the early phase of a pandemic. The same applies to the tedious work of contact tracing, which has forced the health authorities to work overtime in recent years.

Which instruments are most likely to help in the current phase of the crisis, i.e. in the transition from pandemic to endemic, remains open in many cases.

According to the experts, it is just as unclear how effective school closures were as the general effectiveness of masks - because it often happens that the wearer does not put them on correctly.

The traffic light would have done well to think about how it wants to steer the country in the fall in the past few weeks - after all, the regulations of the Infection Protection Act only apply until the end of September.

Instead, the FDP, which was often unsuccessful in the corona pandemic, has urged the coalition not to do anything publicly until the report of the committee of experts has been presented.

And now?

Right at the beginning of the paper, it becomes clear how little the study is capable of withstanding possible political decisions.

According to the Commission, it should have been set up much earlier, and there was also a lack of "sufficient and stringent accompanying data collection".

And for a final assessment, the committee also lacked the staff and time.

In the end, the health policy blockade by the Free Democrats primarily cost time to talk to doctors, clinics, vaccine manufacturers and municipalities about what needs to happen over the summer so that there is no threat of being overwhelmed in the fall.

And it's not just the Greens who are currently afraid that things will eventually go back to the way we're used to: crisis mode, night meetings, decisions that aren't always well cast in terms of crafting just before the end.

The recent statement by Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger shows that the FDP was probably never really serious about waiting for the report anyway.

Shortly before the report was published, the Free Democrat called the school closures a mistake that "should not be repeated".

The party's admonition to wait for the results of the report apparently applied primarily to the others.

There is much to suggest that the federal government is once again sending the country largely unprepared into the Corona autumn.

Because after the summer break, the Bundestag only has two weeks of sessions to pass a new infection protection law.

Last year, those responsible were able to blame their hesitation and procrastination on the federal elections and the change of government.

This year everyone can see who is in charge.