It sounds like a final warning, but so far it is nothing more than an appeal to the personal responsibility of each individual: It is better to cancel or avoid larger events in view of the increasing number of corona infections.
That is what the Robert Koch Institute recommends.
The reality is far from it. Tens of thousands of people met in the Rhineland and celebrated the start of the carnival season shoulder to shoulder, while 26,000 spectators met in Wolfsburg on Thursday evening to experience a 9-0 win over Liechtenstein in the World Cup qualification. Some of the images were disturbing, and it is very likely that in retrospect they will be even more disturbing.
At the same time, they show that the current discussion about the vaccination status of individual national soccer players is possibly nothing more than the start of a new acid test.
A crucial test in which it will no longer just be a question of who can be there - as an unvaccinated person: at an international match;
when traveling by air;
when visiting a restaurant.
If everything is not wrong, another question will come to the fore again: What is still possible at all?
It's about life and death
After the first Corona wave in spring 2020, sport, especially football, was one of the first to put pressure on and act at the same time. Experts developed hygiene concepts in order to initially resume gaming and then to be able to allow spectators again. That was brave - and: it was right. But now, in the midst of the fourth corona wave, the parameters have changed, a dynamic has emerged that does not bode well for the coming weeks.
More infections, more serious illnesses, more hospitalizations, more deaths - especially among the unvaccinated.
The virologist Christian Drosten last said in an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that this wave could have been prevented: with a correspondingly high vaccination rate in the population and timely booster shots.
But it is now probably too late for that.
The vaccination gaps are too big - not only in the national team, but also in the rest of society.
And that is precisely why it would be important for those responsible for the German Football Association and the German Football League to end their silence and get involved again in the Corona debate.
As?
With a self-imposed vaccination requirement for your own circus.
And with the voluntary refusal to fill the stadiums to the last permitted seat.
Because it's not just about a game anymore.
It's a matter of life and death - again.