BERLIN – Susan Tabbach feels exhausted. She juggles with work and takes care of her three small children at home full-time during lockdowns, while worrying about her elderly parents, who have not been vaccinated.
She sees little prospect of enlightenment. “I’m just exhausted,” said the 41-year-old architect from Aachen, a German city close to the Belgian and Dutch borders. “At least I would like to know that my parents are safe.”
Europeans of all ages, from children to grandparents, are exhausted by a crisis that is now entering its second year and whose end seems to be disappearing behind the horizon. Vaccinations are progressing at an icy pace, Covid-19 cases are on the rise again, and less popular 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 US and UK, where vaccinations are progressing much faster and the focus is shifting to reopening the economy.
Germany is a striking case of changing fortunes. The country fared well in the first phase of the pandemic last year, and authorities received praise for keeping infections and deaths low. Now, after four months of largely ineffective lockdowns and with a slow and bureaucratic vaccination regimen that has not accelerated so far, infections are on the rise again and the government is seeing its opinion polls plummet.