Before the summer vacation, many citizens face a moral dilemma.
You not only have to decide whether half-board is sufficient in Greece, because the breakfast buffet is always so rich, but also whether a summer vacation has to take social damage into account;
whether people die in autumn because the Weber family bathed in the azure Mediterranean for two weeks.
The dilemma arises because we are tired of the pandemic and long for freedom, but on the other hand we don't want to be to blame for people getting sick.
That can make you grumpy as long as the conflict rages within us, and angry as soon as someone from the outside urges caution.
In this situation, many politicians postpone their ethics of abstinence for a while.
If the Germans then spend their summer as if there was no pandemic, the dilemma has not disappeared.
The warning to be careful is still correct.
We cannot make the world as we like it.
It looks good at the moment, but that may change in autumn
Like every year, autumn comes after summer. Last year, the summer was also carefree because the pandemic seemed under control thanks to mask requirements and the weather. Then came autumn, against which the first wave in the curve diagram looked like a small hill in front of an alpine panorama. At the moment things are looking good too, the incidence is bobbing around, more and more people are telling their friends about their vaccinations, there are rapid tests, there are enough masks and more basic epidemiological knowledge among the population than ever before. But that doesn't mean that autumn will be easy. In the cold autumn wind, small foci of infection quickly turn into wildfire again here and there.
Germany has just vaccinated half of its citizens, and most of them only once, which leaves the possibility that they could easily get sick and pass the virus on to those who have not been vaccinated.
Even in countries where many more people are double vaccinated than in Germany, the incidence flares up again and again.
The children are not vaccinated at all when they play on the beach in Mallorca, where the incidence is rising.
After their return, they could infect whole school classes - and thus spread the virus back into society.
What we do in summer can cost us autumn.
We still do not know today which letter of the Greek alphabet we are talking about.
Perhaps Pfizer doesn't protect against omicrons and psi as well.
Heiko Maas is wrong
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas thinks that all corona requirements can be lifted if all Germans had the opportunity to be vaccinated. He's wrong. If unvaccinated people die in the emergency rooms in autumn because they are not as smart and informed as top politicians, Maas will not be able to say that it was their own fault that they were not vaccinated in the coffin. Even the esoteric acquaintance with a vaccination phobia did not deserve to die from suffocation.
So what to do
We have to manage to withstand the leisurely warnings of caution that are now as dear to us as the question in the supermarket about the discount card.
The greatest German failure in pleasure, Immanuel Kant, would have said with a view to the pandemic: Act in such a way that the maxim of your actions could at any time also apply as the principle of a general ordinance of the Federal Ministry of Health.
This is a reminder to think about the common good, but also a protection against exaggeration.
Our interior ministry can only demand what might apply to everyone.
It is not one of them to forego vacation altogether or to limit it to the vaccinated if the vaccine is still not enough for everyone.
Who wants Jens Spahn in their ears?
The main problem will be that after all the lockdowns we will feel a certain tickle of finally doing what has been forbidden for so long: bathing in the crowd, hugging people, throwing off the mask and above all not being worried when others do just that . Vacation is precisely the time when there are no constraints. Who would want Jens Spahn in their ears? In moments like this, it probably helps to feel sorry for your future self, who will have to live with restrictions in autumn because the number of deaths will rise again.
Those who manage to exercise some caution without getting angry about so much affect control can enjoy a vacation without a guilty conscience. The very subtle might say that whoever does the right thing will find much more lasting satisfaction. And if you still have the strength to test yourself regularly after your vacation, you can look to yourself as a good person. This also has a recreational value.