Short post again, because I am travelling, but BILD confirms what we have seen coming for weeks: The general vaccine mandate has no prospects of majority support in the German Bundestag, and is now a dead letter. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and health minister Karl Lauterbach will shift their efforts to pushing a narrower mandate for the 50+ crowd, but I doubt this will go anywhere either.

After Saturday, most restrictions will be lifted everywhere but Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Case numbers have already started to fall, and they’ll continue to do so even in the absence of supermarket mask rules and green passes. It’s hard to see how there is any energy left in this thing after that.