Do you think the COVID situation will be any different in 2023?

In 2023, we are likely to have another government which will do what the rest of the world (with the exception of the PRC) has done: stopped using Covid as an excuse for controlling the population.

Congress was not cancelled due to any government rule.

>it is foreseeable that strict hygiene requirements will be necessary and in all likelihood mandatory – if an event of the size of the Congress can be approved at all. What might be possible would not be a Congress

Sounds like regulations were factored in to me?

The question is not one of whether the government would approve it (they will, they approved Oktoberfest after all), but one of whether the CERT team of the CCC would approve it (and they wouldn't)

Government can impose a maximal capacity for events on short notice under the new COVID rules from October

https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/coronavirus/in...

Congress was cancelled in anticipation of government rules. It says so in the announcement.

No, it was cancelled in anticipation of a new COVID wave that would make a strict hygiene concept necessary, and bacause most of the volunteers wouldn't want to attend such an event. That these measures might also become mandatory was only an additional aspect, but not decisive at all.

Huh? The next federal election is in 2025

Not all governments survive for a whole term.

The CCC organizers probably hope that it will be.

It is possible that we will have a viable universal sarbecovirus vaccine by then.

Or an effective intranasal sars-cov-2 specific vaccines that provides good protection from infection/spread in the upper respiratory mucosa. This is to complement the strong protection against serious disease in the body serum/lower lungs that intramuscular vaccines give.

I have high hopes for India's now approved (positive phase 3 trials) adenovirus based one even if astrozenacca's rushed repackaging of theirs as intranasal failed.