Today marks the first day that COVID vaccines are available to everyone, everywhere across the US. Well, everyone over the age of 16, which technically means 76% of the US population. And everywhere there is availability, so even if you want it, you might need to wait a few days or weeks to be jabbed. Still, the moment is massive.
 
This time last year, I wrote about companies doing good during pandemic, like Crocs and All Birds giving free shoes to healthcare workers on the front lines; Talkspace offering them free digital therapy; Thinx accepting donations to get period products to those in need; and Sweetgreen as an example of one among hundreds of restaurants feeding hospital staff.
 
In that same newsletter, I also called out the global success of leadership by women, pointing specifically to Angela Merkel and her 1-minute video explaining in very clear terms why modeling the spread of the virus from person to person is so important. A year later, my lens is re-focused on Germany. I have asked my life-long friend Ally, mom of three school-aged boys and an ex-pat who moved to Germany several years ago, to share a little bit about current day life in the EU. Having read about vaccine shortages and ongoing lockdowns, I craved a first-person narrative of life there. Is it really so different from ours here? Over the past few days, Ally has sent me a series of overflowing emails, packed with descriptions of parenting, policing and pandemic. While she certainly doesn’t speak for everyone, everywhere, she represents an international perspective of someone, somewhere else. And for that, I am deeply grateful.
 
Life is boring – and often confusing. Rules keep changing. Since the start of November, we have had serious contact restrictions: we are allowed to see only one or sometimes two adult members of another household. Children under 14 are normally not included in this number, thankfully, so I can have an adult friend, or another mother with kids over for a play date or, as was the case last week, for one of my kids’ birthdays. 
 
People are meting one-on-one for walks, as that is pretty much all one can do. But it’s been an unusually cold, rainy, snowy, and long winter, which has made walking quite unappealing much of the time. It snowed several times even this week – mid-April. Gratefully though, since the beginning of the pandemic last spring, we in Germany were always allowed to walk outside in the fresh air, as long as you could claim to be purposefully exercising versus loitering or socializing. So, walks with a friend have become the one consistent and social thing one can do. And they’ve been a life saver – for me and almost everyone I know. My poor friend Julie who has a hip problem and cannot walk well is consequently not coping as well with the lockdown as most others. But no one, it seems, is doing very well. We’ve all had enough. 

The rules are all, at least anecdotally, enforced. Everyone knows at least one friend who has a police story to tell. The police are a visible presence, regularly patrolling the sidewalks and streets. They have on several occasions stopped by the playground where my kids play and told them that they need to spread out or go home. In the worst of times, the kids weren’t allowed to visit the playgrounds at all. 

People are annoyed and angry at the federal government (yes, even Saint Angela, who isn’t quite as revered here), and at the European Commission for delaying the vaccine rollout due to price and other negotiations. And the elaborate and constantly changing rules get us into strange situations here in Europe where, for instance, Mallorca, Spain recently opened up to tourists, so someone can fly from Germany and stay in a hotel there; but someone from the island itself isn’t allowed to drive a few towns over to visit a relative and stay in that same hotel (or any hotel). The Germans were fine with this; the Mallorcans not. 
 
Hotels in Germany have only been open for business travelers or emergencies. A 9pm curfew is now, once again, in effect – for how long this will be, nobody knows. The government tends to lockdown for two-week periods at a time, and then reassess again before the scheduled lockdown end date, generally opting to extend the lockdown a further two weeks, and so on. This happened all winter long. People here keep complaining that the government’s solution is always to lock down, that they need to get more creative. 

At least we’re not next door in France, some of us tell ourselves, where the curfew is 6pm. In both countries, it is enforced by police, with stiff fines. I was at a friend’s apartment two weeks ago celebrating Passover on Saturday night, listening to not loud music and even briefly dancing, for the first time in over a year. There were four adults in attendance (from 2 households) and we were completely COVID compliant. At 12:30 there was a knock on the door and fifteen police, responding to an anonymous neighbor concern, showed up to check that we were complying with the COVID rules. And they meant business. 
 
All restaurants, cafes, and bars, and of course places where larger groups traditionally gather such as concerts and movie theaters, have been closed since November 2nd of last year, which means we’re in our 6th month of lockdown. Shops too have, for the most part, been closed, save for the brief periods when one has been allowed to make a “shopping” appointment online (and now one must show proof of a negative COVID test first), which mainly ends up being more trouble than it’s worth. So I’ve been in precisely two shops for going on half a year: one appliance store to buy a dishwasher out of desperation (I’d been without one for nearly 3 months during winter lockdown with my three children at home 24/7 and no way to procure a new one, and no installation appointments on the horizon, due to corona), and – far more exciting and frivolous seeming in this period so leaden with gravitas – one women’s department store to buy two blouses that I’ve since had zero occasion to wear. But the point was the buying and the dreaming, in order to feel like a woman – or indeed even like a human, doing something normal – again, briefly. It felt both nostalgic, and a bit hopeful. And with good cause: mass vaccination of the public has finally begun this week in earnest, and more large quantities of vaccines are apparently on their way. 
 
As for schools, I can be grateful that at least here in this country, schools are prioritized and are always the last thing to close when the COVID case numbers go up, and the first to open when the numbers go down. The kids wear masks, and stay 1.5 meters apart, but they go. Still, for much of this time, class size restrictions mean most kids (except those in the most “crucial” class years such as 4th graders, juniors and seniors for example) have to alternate days, and therefore can only be in school a couple of times a week. My kids are in a private international school with small classes and enough teachers, so they’ve been able to return to school since late February, for which I feel both very grateful and guilty. But upwards of 90% of all kids go to the (very well regarded, rigorous) local public schools, and it’s been disruptive to say the least.
 
You can only give and care for so long, without much filling you up. I think we’ve all had enough of this and are ready for it to end. Two weeks ago, there seemed like no end in sight. But this week’s news is that there is a lot of vaccine on the horizon, so things are looking up, and I’m ready to be cautiously optimistic. 
 
And now for links…
 
  • Can you get COVID even if you are fully vaccinated? Yes, but the chances are very low. The B.1.351 strain (aka the South African variant) is one that can break through.
 
  • Today’s NY Times newsletter dedicated itself to understanding human irrationality around risk. Automobiles kill 40,000 people in the US every year – why do many people accept this risk but not the far smaller one presented by COVID vaccine?
 
 
  • And finally, some science that isn’t COVID related at all, but it’s amazing: last week came reports of man and monkey successfully mixed in a lab. What could possibly go wrong?! It’s a real thing, and it’s also a hot new ethics debate. New vocab word of the week: chimera.
 
Flashback meme: this guy from a year ago. Still makes me laugh.