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The Living Force
German Article about people during and after the Plandemic
• I could also call it - "A peak into the thinking of people on other side"
People, who don't seem to find their way of living, continuing to live as if in a lockdown. It is a kind of ridiculous/amusing/"joke" content (the reasoning people give off here). Ridiculous in a way also from our perspective here at the forum, who together, have created the largest (Corona) thread of all threads. In order to study, discuss and scrutinize the nefarious whereabouts behind the Plandemic (which are aplenty) down to even the fine details being gradually chiseled out over the past 3 years... How can one not see ? Of course it feels ridiculous to read how people "on the other side" were and still are thinking and arguing according to "Follow the Science ™"
At the same time, the article is also a sad story of how human brains getting sidelined by "follow the science", in which their brains got deeply entrenched in something more like a Cult phenomena; showing off psychotic / troubled characteristics in behaviour. The people in the article seem to sense that something is amiss with their behaviour, deeper down at some fuzzy level. But their physical chosen lockdown, their abstinence and fears, seem to go much deeper, like a "Lockdown of the Mind". Possibly even the soul, if they continue to let it go on like that.
I just want to say "Breathe ! Breathe !!!!!". But in this case, breathing is part of the psychological problem...
Trigger Warning: So, have peek into how the other side appears to think and argumenty. Of course this is written by the reporters of the Zeit Online, so more medical nonsense is embedded and of course no relation what so ever, between "Long Covid" and Vaccine injuries
Note: I have put more bold titles into the text, in order to break it up, in the hope it makes reading a bit easier. (But, those titles could at times slightly distort the original content ?). I often get annoyed by huge digital text masses without breaks or subtitles etc - because otherwise, it becomes so difficult to "plow though", often not even wanting to read it.
www.zeit.de
Corona pandemic: cavemen
Zeit Online • Quentin Lichtblau • 21 April 2022, 2:59 pm
Corona rules have been relaxed, incidences are falling - and yet some young people are still living in lockdown. Why do they not dare to come out?
It's not that Sophie used to live a life without risk. She hitchhiked alone through Europe, pulled food from supermarket containers and smoked cigarettes for 15 years. But when she plays her first concert after more than two years on a Sunday in April, she gets scared. The concert takes place in the fresh air, Sophie plays the guitar.
What happens is what you actually wish for as a live musician, what many have been missing for so long: a community experience, more and more people coming together. But Sophie hopes at this moment that there won't be too many. And when some children approach her and the guitar, she becomes downright uncomfortable. If she would have let the children touch the guitar or play a chord in the past, she now backs away and turns away.
"Oh God, Virus go away"
The next day, Sophie, 35, a musician and author, is sitting in her living room, a classic old building in Berlin. She has just cut vocal sketches on her computer, and there are several guitars and a piano in the room. "It's just sad when I think to myself at moments like this: 'Oh God, you virus, go away'!" she says as she talks about the concert the day before.
A window is open, an air filter hums between her and the reporter. When Sophie gets up to refill tea, she puts on a mask. She has avoided the interiors of restaurants and cafés since the appearance of the omicron variant, since then she has also skipped her rehearsals and performances. Her maximum free movement at the moment is to go for a walk - and only with a maximum of one person. And if there is a crowd of people on the pavement, she changes sides of the street.
She continues to live the lockdown
She is happy to talk about it, but she does not want her surname to appear in a newspaper article. After all, she says, her behaviour is a bit strange. Because Sophie lives, if you will, a life similar to the one she lived in the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus first spread in Germany. She continues to live the lockdown.
For the longest time in the pandemic, science led the way and criticised politicians for their slow course. Following the science often meant behaving more cautiously than the politicians dictated. But in the spring of 2022, something changed: Health specialist and admonisher Karl Lauterbach, as health minister, supported the abolition of almost all measures. Christian Drosten, long something like the head of "Team Vorsicht" [Team Cafeful], recently said in an interview with DIE ZEIT: "But the young, triple-vaccinated can move freely again - they build up immunity when they get infected, also for the community." Indeed, vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection have high antibody levels against all previous variants. And most Omicron cases among vaccinated people are mild.
Difficulties to return to normal
Still, many of these young, triple-vaccinated people find it difficult to get free and return to normal. As soon as relaxations occurred in the course of the Corona pandemic, there were more reports of people who could no longer adapt to the "old normality", who withdrew, who continued the lockdown at least in parts. This is often referred to as cave syndrome.
Hikikomori
There is not yet much research on the subject, but the term was coined by the US psychiatrist Alan Teo last year. According to him, those affected experience a split between the "actual risk and what people perceive as their own risk". Those affected focus their lives entirely on the risk of infection and, according to Teo, neglect the risk of "dying alone and lonely". In extreme cases, behaviour similar to that of hikikomori occurs, a phenomenon observed in Japan well before Corona, in which young people in particular completely isolate themselves socially for months and no longer leave their homes. In a study by the American Psychological Association in February 2021, 49 per cent of respondents said they were likely to find social encounters difficult after the end of the pandemic, although the figures were almost the same among both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
Researching the "Cave Syndrome"
In Germany, psychology professor Ulrich Stangier from Frankfurt University is considered an expert. He is currently researching the Cave Syndrome with an online study, the first part of which was conducted in the summer of 2021. However, Stangier does not want to start the second part until the omicron wave has subsided, so the results are still pending. Until then, Stangier wants the Cave Syndrome to be understood less as a novel clinical picture than as a "temporary adaptation reaction". For as alarming as the figures of the study by his American colleagues sound: The surveys took place at a time when hardly any scientists had declared the pandemic over. So a cautious behaviour despite relaxations was understandable to some extent during that time. Sophie uses the same argument for her current lockdown life.
The vaccination was like a birthday, she says
"Ich habe zwei Jahre investiert, um dieses Virus nicht zu bekommen", sagt Sophie. © Lena Giovanazzi für ZEIT ONLINE
Stephan sees it similarly.
He, too, only wants to give his first name so that "lateral thinkers incited on the internet" don't suddenly appear on his doorstep. He self-deprecatingly calls himself a "cave man" when asked about the term cave syndrome. His cave, however, is not a small flat in Berlin, but a house in a small community near Regensburg.
Stephan is 38 years old, has sympathetic laugh lines, steel-blue eyes and works as an artist. He doesn't want to be too specific: his creations are somewhere between craftsmanship, design and art, he explains. Much of the furniture in the house was made by him, including the table with the blue legs at which he is sitting during the interview.
After the first lockdown,
Stephan moved with his wife and child from Leipzig to the Bavarian Upper Palatinate, where he originally comes from. His wife works as a doctor in the intensive care unit of a nearby university hospital, "on the front line", as Stephan says. Since the first lockdown, Stephan took himself back accordingly, taking care of their eight-year-old daughter, her homeschooling, the household.
Feeling stuck in a way
Actually not an unusual division and for Stephan a time he describes almost a little rapturously as "intense and formative". Now, however, he feels stuck in a way. He used to take part in workshops all over Europe, organise exhibitions, party with friends on weekends. Now he avoids any contact with strangers, he only meets friends with tests, if at all. He hasn't really arrived in his new place of residence yet. In nearby Regensburg there are opportunities to join the local art scene. "In the past, I would have organised something there long ago, a space for exhibitions, joint projects," Stephan says, while his cat stretches out on the living room chair next to him, yawning at first, but then deciding to doze on.
One attempt to bring back a bit of social life was the local table tennis club, which Stephan visited a few times but has now been avoiding again for months: "Right now everyone there is happy that they don't have to wear a mask anymore. And at the same time they're coughing around and catching it."
Looking to get out of the cave ?
Even though Stephan himself realises that sooner or later he would probably have to look for a way out of the cave, he does not want his behaviour to be understood as irrational. "If the incidence is 2,000, the risk is simply too high, done," he says, taking off his cap and running it through his hair. Stephan is less afraid of a severe course of disease in himself than of possible chains of infection: "What if I catch it, don't notice it and then visit my parents or my grandma? Or what if my wife catches it, falls out, and then people don't have medical care? That all resonates." It's similar for Sophie, her boyfriend is part of the at-risk group.
Arguments of external protection
Both Sophie and Stephan first argue with external protection. This is understandable, after all, they are both young and triple-vaccinated - their risk of a severe course of covid is vanishingly small according to all available studies. Moreover, the third-party protection argument is moral: I am not doing this for myself, but for others. Nevertheless, the question arises: How effective is this behaviour? How many infections does it prevent in practice?
Even in small circles it is difficult:
Sophie's boyfriend now regularly meets friends for squash. Does it still make sense for her to keep such a low profile in order to protect him? And Stephan, who thinks in broad social terms and wants to avoid overburdening the health system with his cautious behaviour, has a daughter who goes to school every day and has countless opportunities there to catch the virus and pass it on to him, his wife or his parents. For him, however, this is not an argument against his own limitations: "After all, this is an unavoidable risk. So I have to ask myself all the more: what risk can I avoid?"
How much benefit - at how great a cost - does one's own behaviour have?
And is it a question of weighing up the costs and benefits in terms of health at all? Or is the caution to be explained by other things: civic-mindedness? The inertia of two years of pandemic habitus? The feeling of being able to make a difference?
I am vaccinated, follow the science
Sophie finds few irrational traits in her behaviour. She simply sees no exit moment at the moment that could give her back control over the pandemic. The vaccination, especially the second one, was something like that. Like a birthday, she says. Afterwards, she signed up for a swing dance class, went to parties, played concerts again. "I thought to myself, 'Crass, this is all still working.' I'm vaccinated, follow the science. And if they say everything is fine again, then I can make it work."
Going back into lockdown mode
However, the Omikron variant, the more frequent vaccination breakthroughs and the peculiar communication of the policy caused Sophies to lose the feeling of being the master of the situation again. At the end of 2021, she decides to go back into her lockdown mode, initially for three weeks. During this time, she follows her tried and tested pattern of previous pandemic phases: withdrawing, listening to the Drosten podcast, reading a lot, especially on Twitter - all with the aim of regaining the overview and defining a possible exit: the prospect of a new, adapted vaccine, for example.
Maybe i lost myself in the zero-covid bubble
Keeping up to date on the virus has long been considered exemplary. But the more Sophie reads at the moment, the less good news she finds. "Maybe I've also lost myself a bit in the zero-covide bubble," she says. By this she means an elusive clientele on Twitter that could probably also be described as "Team Hypervorsicht". There, smaller accounts with around 1,000 followers share studies on the pandemic situation, more alarmist than optimistic.
Whereas Sophie had initially informed herself in order to find good arguments to argue with some vaccine-sceptic friends, in her omicron isolation she was now surrounded by a multitude of permanent warnings, who increasingly criticised figures like Christian Drosten - only from the other side than the contrarians: not as a power-obsessed vaccine dictator, but as a social Darwinist and traitor.
Survival of the fittest?
When Christian Drosten said in his podcast that the mucosal immunity caused by Corona infections was a key to ending the pandemic, there was a shitstorm against him in the Zero-Covid-Bubble. "Will the 470 dead at least take mucosal immunity with them to the grave, or will they need two or three more infections for that?" someone wrote. Or: "All this talk about mucous membrane immunity and 'better protection through infection' will blow up in your faces. But hey, it was enough for a bit of applause from the walker faction (again)."
'Great Success of the vaccination campaign'
And when Drosten pointed out in a tweet the great success of the vaccination campaign, which has now led to a different, better situation than in 2020, a user commented: "The 2020 measures were a thousand times better than what's going on now." Christian Drosten and Karl Lauterbach are accused of condoning a contagion, thousands of deaths and long-covid cases: a "survival-of-the-fittest mode."
Fear for one's own voice
Sophie finds such criticism wrong in its drastic nature. Drosten argues from his field of expertise, so he cannot be accused of underestimating Long Covid, for example, since he has transparently pointed out that this is not part of his expertise. And Lauterbach, as Minister of Health, had simply not managed to get his own position accepted. Nevertheless, one has to realise that many of the "bubble" come from risk groups or have corresponding relatives - and because of these higher dangers react more emotionally to relaxation than healthy average citizens.
"No misinformation is spread, only studies and news"
In a certain corner of Twitter, "follow the science" has increasingly turned into an attitude that places one's own risk considerations above previously highly valued voices from the scientific community. While the contrarians often completely negated their personal Corona risk, the zero-covid side can hardly rate it highly enough - and in doing so, overshoots scientific facts in parts. Sophie points out that in her Twitter circles, unlike the contrarians, no misinformation is spread, only studies and news. But she also finds that many have a clear slant. Sometimes they would rather share a threatening study that has not yet been peer-reviewed by other experts than a mature, less fatalistic study, which is often difficult for her to see through as a layperson.
Concerns of Self-protection and Emotions
The longer you talk to Sophie or Stephan, the more you realise that they are definitely concerned with self-protection and that emotions also play a role for them. Sophie is afraid for her voice, her most important instrument, the foundation of her profession and her passion. But if she continues not to perform, she is also endangering her life model: "If you don't perform as a musician, at some point you naturally won't get any more requests," she says. And of course she misses the regular performances and rehearsals more than anything.
Stephan also realises that as an artist he should actually have sought publicity again long ago. But as long as 300 people die from the virus every day, he says, it is simply too difficult to block it out. "Just imagine if a jet carrying 300 people crashed in Germany every day. Then something would really happen!" he says. He says that the everyday life of the pandemic is simply the dominant theme, behind which his art and thinking about an aftermath have also taken a back seat. When he goes to his studio today, he sometimes sits there for three hours, looks out of the window and waits for inspiration.
But how long will this go on?
Sophie hopes for better pandemic conditions, confirmed data on the danger of Omikron and the likelihood of Long Covid, ideally a new vaccine adapted to Omikron. Although her friend is now seeing people regularly again despite risk factors, Sophie wants to maintain her current measures until then. Even if that means giving people a wide berth on the street and getting alienated looks for doing so. "I've invested two years in not getting this virus," she says. "And even if the risk of catching it in the fresh air is still so small: I don't want those two years to end up being in vain because some guy called for his buddy across the street - and I happened to be standing in between."
A long time ago, she confirmed a performance in the middle of the month. It is to take place in a hotel, indoors, lots of people, no masks. For Sophie, this is actually a no-go, but perhaps also a chance to realise that in the end, more might be possible. She doesn't want to rule out the possibility of cancelling.
Fear of the Fear
Stephan has fewer ideas for a possible way out. One thing is certain for him too: "I just don't feel like getting an infection. That's actually totally understandable. Under this premise, however, he does not see a clear path back to his old life at the moment. The world outside his everyday life is still too difficult for him to assess: "Who is the stranger facing me? Is he vaccinated? Is he taking care of himself? Looking ahead, he sees an expanse on the horizon that he cannot estimate. The self-imposed measures are possibly a way for him to maintain a sense of security. Probably Sophie would also agree with him here.
Perhaps this need goes beyond the pandemic for both of them. Perhaps the world in 2022 is simply not a place where one feels a great sense of security beyond one's own four walls. Shortly before the end of the visit, Stephan tells of a campfire he and a few friends had made to get together despite the cold. Back in the confused first Lockdown days, when no one knew exactly what this virus would do to our world. He had looked into the fire for a long time that evening and thought: This is the only thing I can control right now. Nothing else.
END OF ARTICLE
• I could also call it - "A peak into the thinking of people on other side"
People, who don't seem to find their way of living, continuing to live as if in a lockdown. It is a kind of ridiculous/amusing/"joke" content (the reasoning people give off here). Ridiculous in a way also from our perspective here at the forum, who together, have created the largest (Corona) thread of all threads. In order to study, discuss and scrutinize the nefarious whereabouts behind the Plandemic (which are aplenty) down to even the fine details being gradually chiseled out over the past 3 years... How can one not see ? Of course it feels ridiculous to read how people "on the other side" were and still are thinking and arguing according to "Follow the Science ™"
At the same time, the article is also a sad story of how human brains getting sidelined by "follow the science", in which their brains got deeply entrenched in something more like a Cult phenomena; showing off psychotic / troubled characteristics in behaviour. The people in the article seem to sense that something is amiss with their behaviour, deeper down at some fuzzy level. But their physical chosen lockdown, their abstinence and fears, seem to go much deeper, like a "Lockdown of the Mind". Possibly even the soul, if they continue to let it go on like that.
I just want to say "Breathe ! Breathe !!!!!". But in this case, breathing is part of the psychological problem...
Trigger Warning: So, have peek into how the other side appears to think and argumenty. Of course this is written by the reporters of the Zeit Online, so more medical nonsense is embedded and of course no relation what so ever, between "Long Covid" and Vaccine injuries
Note: I have put more bold titles into the text, in order to break it up, in the hope it makes reading a bit easier. (But, those titles could at times slightly distort the original content ?). I often get annoyed by huge digital text masses without breaks or subtitles etc - because otherwise, it becomes so difficult to "plow though", often not even wanting to read it.
Corona-Pandemie: Höhlenmenschen
Die Corona-Regeln sind gelockert, die Inzidenzen sinken – und doch leben einige junge Menschen noch immer im strengen Lockdown. Warum trauen sie sich nicht raus?
www.zeit.de
Corona pandemic: cavemen
Zeit Online • Quentin Lichtblau • 21 April 2022, 2:59 pm
Corona rules have been relaxed, incidences are falling - and yet some young people are still living in lockdown. Why do they not dare to come out?
It's not that Sophie used to live a life without risk. She hitchhiked alone through Europe, pulled food from supermarket containers and smoked cigarettes for 15 years. But when she plays her first concert after more than two years on a Sunday in April, she gets scared. The concert takes place in the fresh air, Sophie plays the guitar.
What happens is what you actually wish for as a live musician, what many have been missing for so long: a community experience, more and more people coming together. But Sophie hopes at this moment that there won't be too many. And when some children approach her and the guitar, she becomes downright uncomfortable. If she would have let the children touch the guitar or play a chord in the past, she now backs away and turns away.
"Oh God, Virus go away"
The next day, Sophie, 35, a musician and author, is sitting in her living room, a classic old building in Berlin. She has just cut vocal sketches on her computer, and there are several guitars and a piano in the room. "It's just sad when I think to myself at moments like this: 'Oh God, you virus, go away'!" she says as she talks about the concert the day before.
A window is open, an air filter hums between her and the reporter. When Sophie gets up to refill tea, she puts on a mask. She has avoided the interiors of restaurants and cafés since the appearance of the omicron variant, since then she has also skipped her rehearsals and performances. Her maximum free movement at the moment is to go for a walk - and only with a maximum of one person. And if there is a crowd of people on the pavement, she changes sides of the street.
She continues to live the lockdown
She is happy to talk about it, but she does not want her surname to appear in a newspaper article. After all, she says, her behaviour is a bit strange. Because Sophie lives, if you will, a life similar to the one she lived in the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus first spread in Germany. She continues to live the lockdown.
For the longest time in the pandemic, science led the way and criticised politicians for their slow course. Following the science often meant behaving more cautiously than the politicians dictated. But in the spring of 2022, something changed: Health specialist and admonisher Karl Lauterbach, as health minister, supported the abolition of almost all measures. Christian Drosten, long something like the head of "Team Vorsicht" [Team Cafeful], recently said in an interview with DIE ZEIT: "But the young, triple-vaccinated can move freely again - they build up immunity when they get infected, also for the community." Indeed, vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection have high antibody levels against all previous variants. And most Omicron cases among vaccinated people are mild.
Difficulties to return to normal
Still, many of these young, triple-vaccinated people find it difficult to get free and return to normal. As soon as relaxations occurred in the course of the Corona pandemic, there were more reports of people who could no longer adapt to the "old normality", who withdrew, who continued the lockdown at least in parts. This is often referred to as cave syndrome.
Hikikomori
There is not yet much research on the subject, but the term was coined by the US psychiatrist Alan Teo last year. According to him, those affected experience a split between the "actual risk and what people perceive as their own risk". Those affected focus their lives entirely on the risk of infection and, according to Teo, neglect the risk of "dying alone and lonely". In extreme cases, behaviour similar to that of hikikomori occurs, a phenomenon observed in Japan well before Corona, in which young people in particular completely isolate themselves socially for months and no longer leave their homes. In a study by the American Psychological Association in February 2021, 49 per cent of respondents said they were likely to find social encounters difficult after the end of the pandemic, although the figures were almost the same among both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
Researching the "Cave Syndrome"
In Germany, psychology professor Ulrich Stangier from Frankfurt University is considered an expert. He is currently researching the Cave Syndrome with an online study, the first part of which was conducted in the summer of 2021. However, Stangier does not want to start the second part until the omicron wave has subsided, so the results are still pending. Until then, Stangier wants the Cave Syndrome to be understood less as a novel clinical picture than as a "temporary adaptation reaction". For as alarming as the figures of the study by his American colleagues sound: The surveys took place at a time when hardly any scientists had declared the pandemic over. So a cautious behaviour despite relaxations was understandable to some extent during that time. Sophie uses the same argument for her current lockdown life.
The vaccination was like a birthday, she says
"Ich habe zwei Jahre investiert, um dieses Virus nicht zu bekommen", sagt Sophie. © Lena Giovanazzi für ZEIT ONLINE
Stephan sees it similarly.
He, too, only wants to give his first name so that "lateral thinkers incited on the internet" don't suddenly appear on his doorstep. He self-deprecatingly calls himself a "cave man" when asked about the term cave syndrome. His cave, however, is not a small flat in Berlin, but a house in a small community near Regensburg.
Stephan is 38 years old, has sympathetic laugh lines, steel-blue eyes and works as an artist. He doesn't want to be too specific: his creations are somewhere between craftsmanship, design and art, he explains. Much of the furniture in the house was made by him, including the table with the blue legs at which he is sitting during the interview.
After the first lockdown,
Stephan moved with his wife and child from Leipzig to the Bavarian Upper Palatinate, where he originally comes from. His wife works as a doctor in the intensive care unit of a nearby university hospital, "on the front line", as Stephan says. Since the first lockdown, Stephan took himself back accordingly, taking care of their eight-year-old daughter, her homeschooling, the household.
Feeling stuck in a way
Actually not an unusual division and for Stephan a time he describes almost a little rapturously as "intense and formative". Now, however, he feels stuck in a way. He used to take part in workshops all over Europe, organise exhibitions, party with friends on weekends. Now he avoids any contact with strangers, he only meets friends with tests, if at all. He hasn't really arrived in his new place of residence yet. In nearby Regensburg there are opportunities to join the local art scene. "In the past, I would have organised something there long ago, a space for exhibitions, joint projects," Stephan says, while his cat stretches out on the living room chair next to him, yawning at first, but then deciding to doze on.
One attempt to bring back a bit of social life was the local table tennis club, which Stephan visited a few times but has now been avoiding again for months: "Right now everyone there is happy that they don't have to wear a mask anymore. And at the same time they're coughing around and catching it."
Looking to get out of the cave ?
Even though Stephan himself realises that sooner or later he would probably have to look for a way out of the cave, he does not want his behaviour to be understood as irrational. "If the incidence is 2,000, the risk is simply too high, done," he says, taking off his cap and running it through his hair. Stephan is less afraid of a severe course of disease in himself than of possible chains of infection: "What if I catch it, don't notice it and then visit my parents or my grandma? Or what if my wife catches it, falls out, and then people don't have medical care? That all resonates." It's similar for Sophie, her boyfriend is part of the at-risk group.
Arguments of external protection
Both Sophie and Stephan first argue with external protection. This is understandable, after all, they are both young and triple-vaccinated - their risk of a severe course of covid is vanishingly small according to all available studies. Moreover, the third-party protection argument is moral: I am not doing this for myself, but for others. Nevertheless, the question arises: How effective is this behaviour? How many infections does it prevent in practice?
Even in small circles it is difficult:
Sophie's boyfriend now regularly meets friends for squash. Does it still make sense for her to keep such a low profile in order to protect him? And Stephan, who thinks in broad social terms and wants to avoid overburdening the health system with his cautious behaviour, has a daughter who goes to school every day and has countless opportunities there to catch the virus and pass it on to him, his wife or his parents. For him, however, this is not an argument against his own limitations: "After all, this is an unavoidable risk. So I have to ask myself all the more: what risk can I avoid?"
How much benefit - at how great a cost - does one's own behaviour have?
And is it a question of weighing up the costs and benefits in terms of health at all? Or is the caution to be explained by other things: civic-mindedness? The inertia of two years of pandemic habitus? The feeling of being able to make a difference?
I am vaccinated, follow the science
Sophie finds few irrational traits in her behaviour. She simply sees no exit moment at the moment that could give her back control over the pandemic. The vaccination, especially the second one, was something like that. Like a birthday, she says. Afterwards, she signed up for a swing dance class, went to parties, played concerts again. "I thought to myself, 'Crass, this is all still working.' I'm vaccinated, follow the science. And if they say everything is fine again, then I can make it work."
Going back into lockdown mode
However, the Omikron variant, the more frequent vaccination breakthroughs and the peculiar communication of the policy caused Sophies to lose the feeling of being the master of the situation again. At the end of 2021, she decides to go back into her lockdown mode, initially for three weeks. During this time, she follows her tried and tested pattern of previous pandemic phases: withdrawing, listening to the Drosten podcast, reading a lot, especially on Twitter - all with the aim of regaining the overview and defining a possible exit: the prospect of a new, adapted vaccine, for example.
Maybe i lost myself in the zero-covid bubble
Keeping up to date on the virus has long been considered exemplary. But the more Sophie reads at the moment, the less good news she finds. "Maybe I've also lost myself a bit in the zero-covide bubble," she says. By this she means an elusive clientele on Twitter that could probably also be described as "Team Hypervorsicht". There, smaller accounts with around 1,000 followers share studies on the pandemic situation, more alarmist than optimistic.
Whereas Sophie had initially informed herself in order to find good arguments to argue with some vaccine-sceptic friends, in her omicron isolation she was now surrounded by a multitude of permanent warnings, who increasingly criticised figures like Christian Drosten - only from the other side than the contrarians: not as a power-obsessed vaccine dictator, but as a social Darwinist and traitor.
Survival of the fittest?
When Christian Drosten said in his podcast that the mucosal immunity caused by Corona infections was a key to ending the pandemic, there was a shitstorm against him in the Zero-Covid-Bubble. "Will the 470 dead at least take mucosal immunity with them to the grave, or will they need two or three more infections for that?" someone wrote. Or: "All this talk about mucous membrane immunity and 'better protection through infection' will blow up in your faces. But hey, it was enough for a bit of applause from the walker faction (again)."
'Great Success of the vaccination campaign'
And when Drosten pointed out in a tweet the great success of the vaccination campaign, which has now led to a different, better situation than in 2020, a user commented: "The 2020 measures were a thousand times better than what's going on now." Christian Drosten and Karl Lauterbach are accused of condoning a contagion, thousands of deaths and long-covid cases: a "survival-of-the-fittest mode."
Fear for one's own voice
Sophie finds such criticism wrong in its drastic nature. Drosten argues from his field of expertise, so he cannot be accused of underestimating Long Covid, for example, since he has transparently pointed out that this is not part of his expertise. And Lauterbach, as Minister of Health, had simply not managed to get his own position accepted. Nevertheless, one has to realise that many of the "bubble" come from risk groups or have corresponding relatives - and because of these higher dangers react more emotionally to relaxation than healthy average citizens.
"No misinformation is spread, only studies and news"
In a certain corner of Twitter, "follow the science" has increasingly turned into an attitude that places one's own risk considerations above previously highly valued voices from the scientific community. While the contrarians often completely negated their personal Corona risk, the zero-covid side can hardly rate it highly enough - and in doing so, overshoots scientific facts in parts. Sophie points out that in her Twitter circles, unlike the contrarians, no misinformation is spread, only studies and news. But she also finds that many have a clear slant. Sometimes they would rather share a threatening study that has not yet been peer-reviewed by other experts than a mature, less fatalistic study, which is often difficult for her to see through as a layperson.
Concerns of Self-protection and Emotions
The longer you talk to Sophie or Stephan, the more you realise that they are definitely concerned with self-protection and that emotions also play a role for them. Sophie is afraid for her voice, her most important instrument, the foundation of her profession and her passion. But if she continues not to perform, she is also endangering her life model: "If you don't perform as a musician, at some point you naturally won't get any more requests," she says. And of course she misses the regular performances and rehearsals more than anything.
Stephan also realises that as an artist he should actually have sought publicity again long ago. But as long as 300 people die from the virus every day, he says, it is simply too difficult to block it out. "Just imagine if a jet carrying 300 people crashed in Germany every day. Then something would really happen!" he says.
He says that the everyday life of the pandemic is simply the dominant theme, behind which his art and thinking about an aftermath have also taken a back seat. When he goes to his studio today, he sometimes sits there for three hours, looks out of the window and waits for inspiration.But how long will this go on?
Sophie hopes for better pandemic conditions, confirmed data on the danger of Omikron and the likelihood of Long Covid, ideally a new vaccine adapted to Omikron. Although her friend is now seeing people regularly again despite risk factors, Sophie wants to maintain her current measures until then. Even if that means giving people a wide berth on the street and getting alienated looks for doing so. "I've invested two years in not getting this virus," she says. "And even if the risk of catching it in the fresh air is still so small: I don't want those two years to end up being in vain because some guy called for his buddy across the street - and I happened to be standing in between."
A long time ago, she confirmed a performance in the middle of the month. It is to take place in a hotel, indoors, lots of people, no masks. For Sophie, this is actually a no-go, but perhaps also a chance to realise that in the end, more might be possible. She doesn't want to rule out the possibility of cancelling.
Fear of the Fear
Stephan has fewer ideas for a possible way out. One thing is certain for him too: "I just don't feel like getting an infection. That's actually totally understandable. Under this premise, however, he does not see a clear path back to his old life at the moment. The world outside his everyday life is still too difficult for him to assess: "Who is the stranger facing me? Is he vaccinated? Is he taking care of himself? Looking ahead, he sees an expanse on the horizon that he cannot estimate. The self-imposed measures are possibly a way for him to maintain a sense of security. Probably Sophie would also agree with him here.
Perhaps this need goes beyond the pandemic for both of them. Perhaps the world in 2022 is simply not a place where one feels a great sense of security beyond one's own four walls. Shortly before the end of the visit, Stephan tells of a campfire he and a few friends had made to get together despite the cold. Back in the confused first Lockdown days, when no one knew exactly what this virus would do to our world. He had looked into the fire for a long time that evening and thought: This is the only thing I can control right now. Nothing else.
END OF ARTICLE
XPan
The Living Force
"Health" Minister Lauterbach, Germany
1 Feb 2023
Lauterbach advises voluntary wearing masks on buses and trains. On Thursday, the obligation to wear masks on buses and trains. The Federal Minister of Health advises that to continue wearing the mouth-nose wear.
It's not even funny, in my opinion. This man has created/empathized so much damage in Germany, I have no words... This is one very sick puppy, if you asked me.
