In the increasingly bitter discussion about the irrationality of an unvaccinated minority, it is currently fairly quiet about many of the other true victims of this ongoing pandemic.

Will what happened once and three quarters of years ago be repeated - only now under different avoidable circumstances?

Eva Sleeper

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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After the new virus had just overtaken us, the old and sick died lonely, without their close relatives. Even the funerals in the smallest circle lacked the ritual consolation that farewell together can give. And people didn't dare to see a doctor - not even when they had very clear symptoms of illnesses that need to be treated immediately in order to have a chance of recovery. The former Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn rarely said wisely: "We will all have to forgive each other a lot."

When the intensive care units filled up again four weeks ago, this time with mostly unvaccinated Covid 19 patients, when the clinics, especially in the south and east of the republic shivered before the vertex of the fourth wave, at least once those patients were the subject of a ventilated Covid -Sick people could possibly dispute the intensive care bed: people with heart attacks, strokes, an accident.

That was and is correct.

More than 1000 cancer diagnoses daily

But what about all those who are now receiving a diagnosis that is not directly life-threatening, but very frightening and, above all, life-changing? Every year around 500,000 people in Germany are diagnosed with cancer. That's more than 1300 a day. Everyone knows people who have or had cancer. Many of them need to be operated on quickly or otherwise treated, and all of them want to get rid of the tumor cells as quickly as possible. At the end of November, the German Cancer Society announced that, due to the tense situation, nationwide hospitals would soon no longer have any capacities available for patients with serious diseases such as cancer. Do a comparatively small number of patients dictate the rules to a significantly larger number?

At the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital in Dresden, 67 people with corona are currently being treated in the Covid monitoring ward and the intensive care unit.

In addition, there are 93 patients with meanwhile negative test results, but who have to be treated further because symptoms are still present.

They are distributed over more than a dozen stations.

160 additional patients - a burden that does not leave a mark on a maximum care provider such as the university hospital in the Saxon state capital.

In Saxony, the incidence was over 800 in the past few days. A call can be read on the clinic's homepage: Due to the infection rate, volunteers are wanted, including trained nurses and doctors, also in retirement, helpers for services and generally supporters from the population.