Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, who has been in negotiations with Health Minister Karl Lauterbach over Fall Corona policies, has announced that mask mandates will likely return to Germany after September, when it comes time to renew our permanent emergency pandemic legislation. In this, the third year of Corona, it has finally become possible to impose measures arbitrarily and in the total absence of any actual crisis, or case statistics, or rising hospitalisations, or deaths.

I’ve spent the past several hours studying reader comments on Die Zeit, in a feeble attempt to understand why anybody finds these policies even remotely rational or appealing.

I am on the verge of losing my fucking mind.