Commentary: Less fear, more impatience – The pandemic is back with full force

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The pandemic is back with full force. For a while it looked like things were finally getting better. Now we have to fight our impatience. A
We thought we had the pandemic under control. Now we have to admit our frustration: It has us under control. Again.

Yesterday was the dramatic climax of a sobering week: 1,747 new infections with the coronavirus have been reported in Austria by Saturday (9.30 a.m.) This is stated in the daily update from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Health. This is significantly more than the previous day (1,163) and exceeds the previous record of Thursday (1,552). If we don’t act, we will have 12,000 new infections per day in two weeks. Winter, the virus’ favorite season, hasn’t even started.

We are set back. Nothing is over. We are back in the middle of it again. And we find it unfair: After all the efforts and privations of the last months! Is it starting all over again? Autumn in lockdown? Christmas in quarantine? Seriously, enough.

Less fear, more impatience
The situation is as threatening as in the first wave, but our condition is different: Today the prevailing feeling is not fear, it is impatience.

Although the virus causes many deaths, there are already over a million worldwide. One does not forget the pictures of corpses on military trucks in Bergamo and forklifts in New York. But very few of us know dramas from personal involvement in family or friends. Despite all the uncertainty, we now know that many infections are bearable. That the treatment methods could be improved. That never before in the history of mankind has there been such extensive research into a vaccine that promises an end.

Despite the suffering it causes worldwide, Corona is no longer the oversized spectre that makes us freeze. That is a good thing. Because only with calmness and confidence can we move forward. But the demonization of the epidemic is also dangerous. In gloomy cases it leads to ignorance. It is mistaken for the all-clear, tempts us to trivialize and to be comfortable, which nobody is immune to. And suddenly there are again too many cases, too many serious ones, too many for the health system.

What is decisive now
For many of us, Corona has gone from being a fear-maker to a nuisance. Corona is annoying. This unspeakable virus dictates our everyday life, forces us to behave in an annoying way, and we would like to talk about something else than Corona, Corona, Corona. It is enough.

Enough is also enough of the confusion that the authorities are creating. But as annoying and disconcerting as the confusion of all the resolutions, statements, regulations, recommendations, expert opinions is – the decisive factor is something else. What is decisive is ourselves.

One of the most famous experiments in science is the marshmallow test from the late 1960s. A child is given a piece of foam sugar and has a choice: either he eats the marshmallow immediately or he resists the temptation for a few minutes and is rewarded with a second one.

Willpower, it works
Corona is the marshmallow test for adults. How we would love to bite into the sweet old life right away. Off with the mask, give me the party! The undisciplined, careless, irresponsible do the same.

But we must resist the temptation. If children can pull themselves together – many have demonstrated willpower in tests – then so can we adults. Self-discipline and self-responsibility is not that difficult. Bite through instead of biting through. Because it is obvious: The price for short-term carelessness is human life, economic collapse, disaster. The reward for persevering, however, is inestimably greater than a second marshmallow.