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Imagine rubbing your eyes - and waking up in a world without corona.
Suddenly you can leave the house without putting on a mask.
You can meet friends in the bar in the evening.
Even your children, if you have any, can go back to school.
Because you are lucky: you live in the “green zone”.
There is only one catch: you are not allowed to leave this zone.
Unfortunately, the whole world is not exempt from the coronavirus, as viruses - they are adaptable and like to mutate - can never be completely eradicated.
Over there, in the “red zone”, there are new infections: there are draconian curfews, infected people are isolated in guarded hotels, and only people living alone are allowed to receive visitors.
Of course, you cannot enter this “red zone” even if your parents live there.
And vice versa, no “red” is allowed to enter the “green zone”.
This is ensured by a border police who have set up checkpoints on the arterial roads.
But you are grateful for the strict border regime.
Because an "entry" of the virus would immediately turn your region red again and all freedom would be lost.
You are terrified of that because you've seen too many lockdowns.
Like in a science fiction
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A dream - or rather a nightmare from which there is no awakening as long as the corona virus is circulating or another, new type of virus is circulating?
The “No Covid” initiative, which has been taking place in concerted action by scientists, activists and journalists over the past few days, is based on a promise of salvation that falls on fertile ground in a society worn down by the crisis.
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And indeed: who would not want an exit door through which one can enter a virus-free paradise?
Who doesn't want to get out of that purgatory into which a haphazard lockdown policy has transformed our society - initially with the declared intention of preventing the intensive care units from being overloaded, but now only with the Kafkaesque goal of making the German health authorities work while working through Ensure infection reports?
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In this situation, the promise of an even more brutal, indefinite lockdown to someday come to a promised land without coronavirus seems attractive.
But apart from the fact that the collateral damage of such a lockdown would be enormous and that a lowering of infections to zero in Europe - which is known to be not an island - is not even considered realistic by Christian Drosten, the utopia withholds its price: a permanent division of the World into green and red zones that flicker again and again, in which the residents would then be locked.
A dystopia from a science fiction film - if you don't think back to the era of the iron curtains.
Dangerous fantasies of purity
The “No Covid” purity fantasy is not only a scientific illusion, it is also a dangerous ideology.
If it asserts itself politically, it is threatened with the fate of all promises of salvation: In achieving the goal it would fail with announcement, for which one can always blame the restlessness of the people.
But the means used would permanently distort our open society.
And worst of all: The “No Covid” campaign is preventing society from finally concentrating on pragmatic solutions, i.e. effectively protecting the residents of nursing homes and allowing more and more relaxation with rapid tests and vaccinations.
Sustainable freedom can only be achieved if we learn to live with the virus.