Covid 19: A German Perspektive (Part 2)

So last time I talked more about the german student experience with Corona than I had actually planned. If you have not read that but would be interested in it, check it out *here*. Today I want to focus more and the general situation in Germany, how the people felt, and why it might have been so different than in other countries. Again I want to talk about things that got to my attention, I am not talking for every german person who lived through the pandemic up till now and not every student, everything I talk about here is my own opinion and my own take on the things that have happened over the last one and a half years.

Let’s start right off with the events my penpals were most surprised about, to hear that people were protesting against the Corona rules. I don’t have a definitive answer to why people are fighting against the government that much, but I have some ideas that could have lead to that behavior. The first one is anger: My mother and her boyfriend actually wanted to go on a big vacation, after years of not being able to go they booked a flight to Turkey and wanted to go there in April 2020. But then it was canceled due to Turkey not wanting tourists to come in anymore for obvious reasons. The first reaction of my mother’s boyfriend was anger, he was angry not to go on that vacation he had planned and earned himself and he needed to direct this emotion at someone. That’s where reason two comes into play: Fake News. He read an article shared on WhatsApp about Trump developing and spreading the virus to gain some kind of control over the world. That’s when his anger found a scapegoat: he wanted to believe Trump is responsible, to be able to be angry at him since he could not really be angry at a virus he did not understand. It was easier to believe in a shadowy figure with bad intentions than an invisible thing that acted irrationally.

There were many different articles like that out there, blaming multiple different people for the pandemic and its consequences. They were shared in person and all over the internet and people did not only wanted to believe them, some did not even have any other source to tell them what was going on. In their confusion and urge to wrap their heads around what was causing the government to make such harsh decisions they were eager to jump at the first opportunity for someone to explain to them what was going on, even if it sounded crazy because what was happening around them was crazy too. When the government later tried to explain more, it was already too late, people had made up their minds and they did not plan on changing them. A big distrust between a part of the public and the government with their doctors trying to explain what happened with science arose. Again: it was just easier to believe in an organization of criminals who created the virus than to listen to the explanations about how a virus from a bat was transferred to humans and why it was now necessary to wear masks because of it.

I don’t want to say those people were dumb, but maybe a bit naive and easy to manipulate. Which was sadly almost instantly used by the people who had problems with the government before. Basically, every group left or right who had some kind of issue with either our Chancellor Merkel, the form of government we have or something related to that used the chaos Corona caused to get more people to march with them. The so-called “Querdenker(lateral thinker)” movement was born out of the unity of all those people, which actually surprised everyone since it must have been the first time ever where people from the far left and the far right came together. They organized so many different protests all over Germany that if you have seen a news report about protest, you might have seen photos of them marching through the streets, neglecting the Corona safety rules, and not being stoped. Why have they not been stopped but at some point even lead by the police, is what you might be asking and it’s a good question, hard to answer though.

In a democracy you should always have the right to protest, if you have not and have to fear getting beaten up or arrested for speaking your mind, you live in a dictatorship or something radical like that. So in general I guess having these protests is a good sign of democracy working or it shows the flaws of it, depends on your point of view. Anyway, that’s the biggest reason why Germany could not just forbid events like that. They have tried to make them as safe as possible, by ruling that protests can only take place with enough distance between the participants and them wearing masks. But as I have already mentioned that was mostly ignored and when hundreds of people, in some cities even thousands of them do not obey, what is the police able to do? Leading them through the streets, trying to prevent them from harming others, and hopefully ending the event as soon as possible, was the most reasonable thing I guess.

It was still hard to see that happening on TV for many people, who had to buy and wear their masks to go grocery shopping or to work. Masks and the ruling on them is a whole topic for itself actually. We began using cloth masks for the start of the pandamic, they could be made by anyone at home, which was not only cheaper but also the only possible option. The demand for medicals masks would have been so big, that the government could not have provided enough for everyone. But when they had bought enough from who knows where they ruled that now people were not allowed to wear cloth masks anymore, only medical masks were deemed safe enough. That was a huge problem because it was also advised to not use the medicals masks more than once, meaning that we went from cheaps masks that you could wash and reuse to having to buy a new mask every time you wanted to leave the house.

So again people got angry, about being forced to buy masks and spend money some might not even have, while thousands of protesters were shown not doing that on TV every day. Small businesses were angry about not getting the help they were promised in time, causing some of them to have to close. Parents were angry because they did not know when and for how long schools would open again, and how to balance their work-life with having to care for their children 24/7 and the list goes on and on. What I want to say is that it’s totally valid to feel confused and be angry about what has happened in this time of crisis. But I hope many people have also learned and maybe changed their minds about what caused all of this to happen and why the government acted as it did. It might not have been perfect, not all decisions made were the best but it was the first time for all of us to deal with problems like this. And maybe we will be more prepared for future situations because of it, not future pandemics I hope, but children learning from home, a new perspective on Work-Life-Balance and working together for a common goal. That’s what I want to talk about in my final entry of this series: positive change.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress