[The 2020 Corona Pandemic-Beyond Omnipresent Prevention]. / Die Corona-Pandemie 2020 ­ über eine allumfassende Prävention hinaus.

This paper is part of Forum COVID-19: Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Spanish Flu 1918-1920 caused between 50 and 100 million deaths. Despite this, West German officials ignored the pandemics of 1957/1958 and 1968-1970. Patient perseverance seems to be an appropriate label for the lack of any action. The appearance of new viruses had a massive impact on the discourse concerning pandemics: "patient perseverance" became "omnipresent prevention." The actual measures against SARS-CoV­2 exceed the "omnipresent prevention" used during the 2009 swine flu pandemic by far.