3: “Ignorance and greed” “We were a group of six men and eight women and we were looking forward to a great skiing holiday.

Anton drove or left immediately. “

3: “ignorance and greed”

“We were a group of six men and eight women and we were looking forward to a great skiing holiday. Afterwards, eleven of us were infected with the virus,” says 55-year-old Ludger from Germany, who has come to Ischgl regularly for 30 years. This year he and his friends had booked from March 7th to 14th. On March 13, however, the stay ended abruptly after Ischgl and the Paznaun Valley were quarantined. “Corona was not an issue in Ischgl in the days before. Even when the Kitzloch and two other après-ski bars were closed, people moved elsewhere to celebrate,” said the entrepreneur, who sharply criticized the local information policy. It only said succinctly that someone was sick, but there was no real information. “In the morning mail in the hotel there is the weather forecast and the joke of the day – and if there is an avalanche danger somewhere, this is communicated immediately. In terms of Corona there was absolutely nothing.”

He only received information after some of the women from the group had left shortly before – and subsequently via social media. Then came the hasty return trip and the voluntary quarantine, which he and his friends immediately went to, says Ludger. “I didn’t feel well right away.” Despite their efforts, they too were not tested at first, and that only worked through a doctor friend, the German says. Conclusion: three men and eight women positive. Two men with relatively mild symptoms such as aching limbs, tiredness, and sometimes fever. One showed no symptoms. The disease was similar in women, with one exception: “She was admitted to hospital with severe symptoms and also had to be ventilated.” Fortunately, she was able to overcome this phase. He is also doing well again: “After about a week the worst was over and my sense of smell and taste is back.” His snack bar is also open again.

The fact that he and his friends would participate in the criminal complaint with a class action lawsuit by the consumer protection association is clear when you review the events. “We are still concerned with them, we talk about it a lot. In retrospect, it is clear how great the risk actually was. If you hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t believe it,” says the entrepreneur, who above all “the people in charge in Ischgl.” The way it was dealt with “accuses. It was “negligent” and has to do with a certain ignorance and greed. After all, every guest spends a lot of money. “If it hadn’t turned out to be so extreme, they would probably have stayed open for another week,” the German suspects. Ischgl used to be great, but the original charm and naturalness have visibly been lost in the past few years, says Ludger, who, like his friends, “never wants to go there again”: “For us, Ischgl died.”

* Name changed by the editor

This article originally appeared in News Issue 15/20

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Rigi9 Thu., Apr. 16, 2020 7:25 pm

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Switch on your brain and leave on time instead of celebrating senseless parties!

Roland Mösl Thursday, Apr 16, 2020 8:56 am

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“For data protection reasons”, if I only hear “data protection”, I get an attack.

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Four buddies made im

“Kitzloch” party

– now one of them has to be artificially ventilated. Three vacationer stories from Tyrol, which are representative of the effects of mass tourism in

Corona times

stand

1: “Highway to Hell” in Ischgl

The same agonizing dramaturgy day after day: First, Rainer makes himself hope that things will finally have to slowly return to normal – but when Jürgen’s brother sends him an SMS every evening with the current state of Jürgen, the optimism is always gone : “He is ventilated and is in an artificial coma,” it reads about. Or: “Jürgen has taken another big step backwards.”

On the current corona development in Austria

From March 5th to 8th, Rainer, the IT manager, and Jürgen, the bank clerk, were on short vacation in Ischgl. Andreas and Harald, two friends from the karate club, were also there. On Friday, March 6th, the four German people in their mid-fifties celebrated together in the “Kitzloch”. A live band played DJ Ötzi hits and “Highway to Hell” by AC / DC. A musician with a saxophone pushed his way through the tightly packed audience. The evening, says Rainer, was exuberant and long

The following Monday, back in Germany, all four men noticed the first corona symptoms. All of them subsequently tested positive and withdrew to quarantine at home for almost three weeks. Cough, fever, lung pain, the disease broke out in three of the friends, reached its climax relatively quickly and gradually subsided. Not so with Jürgen: he went to his family doctor on Tuesday after his return, whose practice was closed as a precautionary measure after Jürgen’s positive test.

Massive cough, finally over 39 degrees fever – on the weekend after the Ischgl weekend, Jürgen finally had to go to the hospital, since then he has been in artificial deep sleep and is – despite intermittent phases of self-breathing – mechanically ventilated. To make matters worse, says Rainer, there was also a bacterial lung infection, and Jürgen had to be given antibiotics. “At the moment, it seems, his life is not in danger, but his condition is still far from stable,” says Rainer.

On Monday – the Monday on which the symptoms intensified in all four men, but no test results were available yet – Rainer contacted the health authorities in Innsbruck by phone. “They said there that everything was fine in Ischgl.”

2: Two friends on the Arlberg

Anna * comes from Upper Austria, is married, a mother and works in the health sector. From March 4th to 8th she was on a skiing holiday with a friend from Germany in St. Anton am Arlberg. “We have been doing this for 20 years. We go skiing, après-ski, we dance and have a good time.” A typical ski holiday – this time, but with unpleasant consequences.

Anna was in quarantine for the past four weeks because she was infected with the corona virus on the Arlberg. “For three days I had a very high fever of up to 39.5 degrees, massive body aches, and my circulation was so well served that I collapsed several times.” She also had to sleep more for the first few days to get better air, she says. Then it got a little better, the fever only reached 37.5 degrees, but after six days she suffered a complete loss of taste and smell – and this still persists, albeit less.

“Fortunately now I’m fine again, although I’m not quite fit yet, of course,” she says, describing how she got sick and how difficult it was to find out about her infection: Anna took the train to St. Anton traveled and drove back home on Sunday March 8th. Because she didn’t feel well on Monday, she stayed at home that day, which she sees as a lucky coincidence: “I work a lot with people with health problems. It is impossible to imagine if I had infected one of them and who might have died.” A psychological burden that she also dragged around in the days of uncertainty.

When her fever rose more and more, Anna B. turned to the health hotline 1450 and asked if she could be tested for Corona. She was told that this was not possible because she was not from a risk country. She should wait and contact her family doctor. He prescribed an antipyretic. On Tuesday, March 10th, she found out that a hut keeper from St. Anton had tested positive, so she turned back to number 1450. There they told her again, this time rather annoyed, that she would not be tested. Unsure, Anna went to her family doctor the next day and expressed her desire for the test. The doctor regretted that he could not arrange a test. Anna tried the Tyrol hotline, where on Thursday, March 12th, she was advised to contact St. Anton directly. “To my surprise, I was immediately put through to the mayor. The mayor told me that he couldn’t tell me the name of the landlord for data protection reasons, but I should tell him which huts I had been to. I did that, and then it was clear that I had contact with the hut keeper, “says Anna. “We were there twice, were served by the host and once he sat down with us because he knew someone at the table.”

As a result, she called again in 1450 and was tested after she had been flown several times from the queue. The family doctor came, put on the protective suit on the doorstep and took the nasal and throat swab. She was tested at 2 p.m., the next day at 3 p.m. Anna B. got the result: positive.

“I immediately informed all my contacts – luckily nobody was infected, not even my doctor.” And her husband did not show any symptoms either.

“If I had known that back then, I would not have gone there or left immediately”

That was not the case with her friend from Germany, who runs her own practice. She herself complained “only of a cold and a little headache”, but infected four people from her private and professional environment. What particularly annoys Anna in retrospect is above all the way the public authorities acted in the matter. “The matter with the hut keeper was never really communicated. He must have been infected from whom.”

In addition, Tyrol had already been informed from Iceland on March 5 that 14 holidaymakers in the Oberland had been infected – which was commented by the authorities at the time with the statement that they were probably infected on the plane. “If I had known that then, I would not have gone to St. Anton or left immediately.”