BERLIN: Susan Tabbach feels exhausted. He has been juggling working and caring for his three young children at home during closures, while caring for his elderly parents, who are not vaccinated.
She sees little prospect of relief. “I’m exhausted,” said the 41-year-old architect from Aachen, a German city near the Belgian and Dutch borders. “I’d at least like to know my parents are safe.”
Europeans of all ages, from children to grandparents, are running out with a crisis that is now in its second year and whose end seems to be receding beyond the horizon. Vaccinations are progressing at an icy pace, Covid-19 cases are rising again, and increasingly unpopular governments are imposing new restrictions on a weekly basis.
The mixture of pessimism, resignation, and anger contrasts with feelings of optimism elsewhere in the West, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, where vaccines are progressing much faster and attention is moving toward reopening the market. ‘economy.
Germany is a surprising case of a change of fortune. Last year the country had a good result in the first phase of the pandemic and authorities got applause for keeping infections and deaths low. Now, after four months of largely ineffective closures and with a slow, bureaucratic vaccination regime that has so far not picked up speed, infections are flaring up again and the government is seeing its votes sink.