For some, lockdown could come even if lockdown doesn't come.

Because every tightening of the measures to protect society from the pandemic and its consequences has undesirable and sometimes devastating side effects.

Whether or not they are acceptable may be disputed on a case-by-case basis.

However, that such collateral damage from appropriate or long overdue protective measures should be openly named, especially those who now rightly advocate convincing the remaining vaccine skeptics with even more education.

So let's look at a few figures from the cultural scene: Frankfurt Opera lost six thousand subscribers during the last lockdown.

The neighboring theater complains about a drop in subscriptions by a little more than a fifth.

Something threatens to break away that has grown over the years and decades.

In a fire letter to the Hessian Prime Minister Bouffier, opera director Bernd Loebe raises the question of whether the opera will ever recover from this, sees a whole system of public cultural institutions at risk and therefore calls for a distinction between leisure facilities and cultural institutions and the differentiated hygiene concepts of many in the future Not to disregard stages.

Two signal rockets of different types

At the same time, his colleague Anselm Weber took a hard stop. In view of the new regulations that will come into force at his house on Sunday, the Frankfurt director has now announced that the theater will be closed at short notice: All performances will be canceled from December 5th to 9th. So far, the 2-G rule has applied in the Frankfurt theater when the auditorium is fully occupied. From Sunday on, the chessboard rule also applies, which requires free spaces between the spectators. This reduces the permitted number of spectators to a maximum of 326 in the large house and 71 spectators in the chamber plays. But because considerably more tickets have been sold for the next performances, the house is faced with an organizational dilemma with a not insignificant moral component:How do you want to decide which children are allowed to see the already sold out performances of “Wickie and the Strong Men” and which are not?

Health authorities do not know any criteria for this either.

So you close completely for a week, look for solutions, wait to see what will happen and arm yourself as best you can.

One director writes a letter to the prime minister, the other closes his shop temporarily: two signal rockets of different types, fired from the same emergency.

In the meantime, the Dresden State Theater has announced that it will be closed until January 9th.