Was the Oktoberfest a mistake?

The number of corona infections in Munich and the surrounding area is skyrocketing, the hospitals and intensive care units are full, and more patients than in the previous months have to be ventilated invasively. O'zapft is now just the infusion bag in the isolation ward. Is it a joke to point this out? Did it make sense to let people with masks take the S-Bahn to the Wiesn, where they would then celebrate a corona party with thousands of other people? Is this the "normality" that is so much talked about?

The pandemic is incredibly exhausting - mainly because it demands the personal responsibility that comes with personal freedom. Celebrating the Oktoberfest on the backs of doctors and nurses and paralyzing large parts of public life because more and more bus drivers, salespeople, police officers, educators and teachers are lying flat has nothing to do with being casual about dealing with a pandemic. But with negligence. By the way: Anyone who only dies “with” Corona would probably have lived longer. And every day counts in life. Not every measure.

The author is a militant North German and still has nothing against folk festivals

Hundreds of thousands of people danced, drank and celebrated life at the Oktoberfest. No 2G, no 3G, no masks - even politicians who had just campaigned for measures really let themselves go. Following such celebration excesses, people get sick, it has always been like this: runny nose, fever, cough. Instead of staying at home and recuperating -- that's supposedly the way it used to be done in the past -- people run out and have chopsticks shoved down their throats and noses. And, oh wonder, there it is: a corona wave. Surely there is also a wave of influenza, a wave of colds and a wave of sexually transmitted diseases, but nobody is interested in their discovery.

This unequal treatment is incomprehensible in view of the fact that Covid is now at the danger level of the flu. The solution is not the abolition of the Oktoberfest, but an end to the obsessive concern with infection numbers, mass testing and the obligation to isolate. Covid will not go away. More waves will come.

The author has never been to the Oktoberfest. He prefers to drink his beer alone.