How much confidence is there that the pandemic will end?
Image: dpa
The new era has begun: while the Omikron wall is building up in front of us, it is now worthwhile to think about an early end of the epidemic through an immunologically orchestrated “post-infection”.
KA thought can be presumptuous enough that it does not appear somewhere in the scenarios with which our pandemic future is already being scientifically negotiated today. Confidence may seem like such an intellectual venture to many, especially now that the Omikron wall is building up in front of us, and at such times the fixed point of public debate is always directed towards the worst-case scenario. Christian Drosten himself, the recognized expert on the coronavirus calamities, has opened up the possibility for the gullible in his most recent podcast with Korinna Hennig: We are, he said, “dealing with a perfect post-pandemic virus”. What is meant is omicron.
Drosten’s post-pandemic story went largely unheard politically, the immediate danger lurking through Omikron seems too powerful to be able to deal with the time after the pandemic. In any case, it is downright disreputable to speak of a post-pandemic time, when fifty-two percent of the world’s population have not even received a double vaccination, four fifths of Africa are still practically unprotected, and the vaccines (poor China!) Against the elemental force of the viral mutation are gradually falling Threatening to fall behind.