BERLIN – Susan Tabbach feels drained. She has been struggling to work and take care of her three young children at home full time during the blocks, while worrying about her elderly parents, who have not been 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 border. “I would at least like to know if my parents are safe.”
Europeans of all ages, from children to grandparents, are getting exhausted by a crisis that is now entering its second year and whose end seems to be disappearing on the horizon. Vaccinations are progressing at a glacial pace, Covid-19 cases are increasing again, and increasingly unpopular governments impose new restrictions weekly.
The mixture of pessimism, resignation and anger contrasts with feelings of optimism in other parts of the West, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, where vaccines are progressing much faster and attention is moving to reopen the economy.
Germany is a notable case of a change of fortune. The country did well in the first phase of the pandemic last year, and officials received applause for keeping the number of infections and deaths low. Now, after four months of largely ineffective roadblocks and a slow, bureaucratic vaccination regimen that has not yet picked up speed, infections are skyrocketing again and the government is seeing its research plummet.