Because I like going to the mountains and can even do it professionally, over the years I’ve gotten into the habit of making comparisons with the mountain world. When Austria’s Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) announced the quarantine end for large areas of public life a few days ago, I thought briefly of an alpine discipline called Free Solo. The top climbers Alex Huber and Alex Honnold, for example, became famous with it; The latter even directed an Oscar-winning film called Free Solo. You get wet fingers just by watching.
Anyone who climbs free solo does not have a partner, rope or hook with them; a fall almost always means death. For good alpinists, however, free solo climbing is not hara-kiri, but perfect risk management. They know – normally – exactly what to expect, have done the tour several times and know the difficult parts and the less difficult ones. You have to be very, very sure of yourself. It is pure confidence in your own abilities.
In a figurative sense: Does Rauch really know the wall that he wants to climb from August 1st so well, or does he want it – fired up by the economy, coalition partners and the many annoyed people (yes, there are reasons to be against the quarantine !) – just get out of the gloomy valley of everyday Corona? Does Rauch possibly no longer see the mountain for sheer urge for freedom when he trusts in FFP2 masks for corona infected people, distance regulations and common sense (“Those who are sick stay at home”) as protective measures? So is a regulation that has not been thought through in many parts and also poorly communicated, still risk management or is it already hara-kiri? And how exactly is that supposed to work if you can go to the restaurant with Corona but have to wear a mask there?
Health experts warn of the new regulation
In any case, many health experts such as the Gecko Covid crisis fighters warn against dropping the quarantine rule as the most important safeguard, given a seven-day incidence of more than 700 and summer highs in patients with Covid-19 in hospitals. According to Gecko, the fact that this works in other countries is partly due to their higher vaccination rates. The SPÖ-governed federal states are reacting furiously to the government’s ill-prepared solo effort, purely out of opposition principle. Even Rauch’s wife Gabriele Sprickler-Falschlunger, general practitioner and Vorarlberg SPÖ boss, told her husband in a press release (no, that’s not a column joke, just Austrian reality) that she finds it quite adventurous what terrain her husband is in now so dare. Tenor of the criticism: The real difficulties will come in the fall.
I then realized very quickly that the Corona climbing comparison was not entirely correct. Because with solo climbing you are alone, so you are only responsible for yourself. That’s the big difference: when you fall, you don’t pull everyone else with you.
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