Carnival: Virologist Streeck back to “Coronas Ground Zero”

carnival
Virologist Streeck back to “Coronas Ground Zero”

Hendrik Streeck (45) just looks great, I have to say that. In the bright white captain’s uniform that he threw himself into this Saturday evening, he would easily outdo Florian Silbereisen as the dream ship captain. “Love” is written on the gold chain he wears around his neck. Next to him is his husband Paul Zubeil as a magician. And both shine.

Professor Streeck is quite a private person this evening – and yet not. Because the place where the virologist celebrates carnival a few days before the start of the great days is, as he puts it, “a place with history”. It is, so to speak, the ground zero of the corona pandemic: the big cap meeting of the Langbröker Dicke Flaa carnival association in the Gangelt-Langbroich community meeting – the event that turned out to be the first corona superspreader event in Germany in 2020. A beer wreath and drink vouchers from the legendary meeting are now in the House of History.

Almost half of the approximately 450 participants were infected with the virus, which was still mysterious at the time, during the five-hour celebration. As a result, the first major corona outbreak in Germany occurred in the Heinsberg district in North Rhine-Westphalia, directly on the border with the Netherlands. As a result, the tiny town was the focus of attention from one day to the next. TV crews roamed the streets, the revelers were blasphemed on social networks, according to the motto: Now we have this epidemic here because they couldn’t behave at the carnival.

Cap meeting as an occasion for the first major corona field study

“All the rumors that were spread at the time – very terrible,” says a woman who does not want to give her name. “We know the alleged patient zero, and what he was accused of is a mess.” He had not behaved irresponsibly at all.

In the end it was Streeck who rehabilitated the Gangelter. Initially viewed with suspicion by many, the Bonn scientist took the cap meeting as an opportunity for the first major field study on Corona, the “Heinsberg study”. In 2021, he published another study that found poor ventilation had helped spread the virus at the party. Alcohol consumption, on the other hand, was not confirmed as a risk factor. All of the speculation that the revelers could have encouraged the outbreak of the disease through alcohol-related disinhibited behavior was thus disproved.

“If you look back over the last three years, you can see how easy these transfers are,” Streeck points out. “There shouldn’t have been a carnival party at all. Of course, they’re more likely to be predestined for such a superspreading event, but that could have been anywhere. That it happened here in Gangelt was coincidental, and you can say you’re lucky that it wasn’t at the Cologne carnival back then, that would have been completely different.”

Streeck: It’s important to draw a line

In the meantime, the expert has made friends in Gangelt. “I was very happy to have been invited,” he told the German Press Agency. “For me it’s a bit of an end to the pandemic. It’s not completely carefree, but I think it’s also important to draw a line.” The Heinsberg District Administrator Stephan Pusch, who became known nationwide for his crisis management in the Corona crisis, sees it that way. “It’s already coming full circle somewhere today,” says the CDU politician in the priest’s costume. “That’s life: Joy and sorrow go hand in hand.” For him, the celebration means the “start of a new normality”. People would now celebrate carefree again, and “that’s a good thing.”

Anja is one of those people whose face is full of anticipation this evening. She was also present at the infamous February 15, 2020 session. How does she come here now? She doesn’t have to think for a moment to answer: “With the same joyful carnival feeling as always.”

dpa