The state government in Baden-Württemberg has decided to maintain alert level II for Corona despite a declining hospitalization incidence and intensive care bed occupancy. While the number of occupied intensive care beds is decreasing - which is supposedly the decisive value - the state's measures are maintained although the official basis for this simply does not exist.

This alert level II is to be maintained for the time being until the beginning of February, when it will be redefined or revised. The whole thing is justified with the fear of the spread of the omicron variant. At the moment, Baden-Württemberg has only about half the hospitalization incidence to justify this. It is just at 3.1, whereby an incidence of 6 per 100000 is the official limit. It is much closer with the (declining) intensive care bed occupancy: 378 are still occupied, while there the limit for alert level 2 was set at 450. The state does not want any let-up in the measures, which include curfews for the unvaccinated between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. in many rural and urban counties.

If the gradual model is not adequate to make an accurate assessment of the pandemic situation, why is the state government's policy based on it? It is particularly absurd that, given the higher risk of infection posed by the Omikron variant, curfews for the unvaccinated and contact restrictions are being maintained on the one hand, while at the same time quarantine regulations are being decisively relaxed. Among these relaxations is the regulation that contacts with booster vaccination should not be quarantined at all in the future. This is supposedly done to prevent a "breakdown of public life". What public life are we talking about here? It does not exist anyway due to the current regulations. What it is really about is obvious: Whoever has to be quarantined because of infection or contact will drop out at work. Since the Omikron variant is particularly contagious, it can be expected that the number of infected and contact persons will rise sharply. If they all go into quarantine now, who will produce surplus value for the boss? It's the same old story.
The omicron variant is probably more contagious, but the courses are milder. So what is the government's approach? The previously valid parameters, hospitalization incidence and intensive care bed occupancy are simply thrown overboard on the grounds of high risk of infection in order to continue to maintain repressive measures. At the same time, regulations that can actually prevent the virus from spreading more rapidly are being relaxed in the service of profits.

Obviously, the state government is not acting in a scientific manner at all in the fight against the pandemic, but is primarily oriented to what serves the preservation of the economy and the expansion of the power of the executive. It is not at all about the interests of the masses.