We actually know what helps against the corona virus: vaccination, masks, distance. And a new Corona variant will come next autumn. And it will infect many people. But not even the genetic monitoring of the virus works perfectly at the moment.

In the third year of the pandemic, it almost has a ritual character when this question is debated shortly after Pentecost and before the parliamentary summer break: What are we actually going to do in autumn if the number of infections rises significantly again? As if we hadn’t already learned so much about this virus and what helps: Vaccination above all. But also masks. Because the fact that “contacts” are needed to generate cases of infection has not changed since the first cases in Wuhan in 2019. So if you don’t want to completely isolate people, as has been practiced in China up to now as a “dynamic zero-Covid strategy”, you have to protect them when they come together.