Woe to, it appeals to personal responsibility.

Or, for example, reminded that Corona is not taking a Christmas break, even if stricter contact restrictions are not to apply throughout Germany until December 28th.

That is too late for some, and some countries and districts are rushing forward, but at the moment neither politicians nor scientists can please everyone if the crowd has to do without firecrackers and a New Year's Eve party may include a maximum of ten people despite "2 G", otherwise party just two.

Sonja Kastilan

Responsible for the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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For days the hashtag “snuggly” has been the trend on social media, and in view of harsh comments one wonders whether the infection numbers, which are in a slight decline, are possibly simulating a security that is not even talked about in the current situation can.

To rely on the pandemic to subside and an early end would mean displacing any facts and forecasts, which some fellow citizens are obviously inclined to do if you look around on Twitter.

In this hotbed of highly peculiar tendencies, there is no winter, the classic season for respiratory diseases, but something between terrifying naivete, gloomy apocalyptic mood and heated noise loyalty.

Reality has little in common with the Twitter regulars' table

However, the reality looks different from what the rumble at the virtual regulars' table makes, here Omikron determines what is going on - denial is pointless, as can be seen in Great Britain, the United States and Denmark or the number of cases, which double after two or three days . A good 80 percent of Danes are fully vaccinated and more than a third have already been boosted, which is important now. However, according to British calculations, the R value for Omikron is between 3 and 5, it is a very infectious variant. And if you haven't seen the award-winning documentary series "Charité intensive" about the Berlin intensive care unit 43, please do so before you publicly blaspheme a supposed "Corona cult" or the precautionary measures that will soon apply,"Because you're afraid of a scratchy throat," belittles. What is happening in these scenes, shot a year ago, is currently being repeated across the country in clinics and hospitals. The courses are particularly difficult among unvaccinated patients, and the current cases are no less tragic than those in winter 2020/21.

More than 110,000 people have now died of Covid-19 in Germany, 5.5 million deaths worldwide, with experts assuming a multiple of the official number of victims because this is based on tests and transparency, both of which are not given everywhere.

After all, almost 9 billion vaccine doses have already been administered.

This can be seen as a success, like the fact that a vaccine was available within just one year of the outbreak of the novel pathogen.

The World Health Organization, WHO, now has more than a dozen preparations in its list of Covid-19 vaccines under the status of market readiness.

New vaccine, new hope?

With the EU approval for Covovax on December 20, the first vaccine that uses recombinant proteins in a tried and tested way to position the immune system against SARS-CoV-2 via these spike molecules, the broad distribution should be accelerated - and make it much easier worldwide: refrigerator temperatures are sufficient for storage. The need for a robust, most familiar formulation is great, even if it is not yet known how well the preparation from the US company Novavax also protects against Omikron, whose effectiveness was around 90 percent in previous studies. In a few days you will have the crucial data, said company boss Stanley Erck in an interview on the occasion of the approval, and if necessary, you would make adjustments to this new variant, you would exchange it with the WHO.