The crisis team, the health authorities and Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter must be asked why they are fighting in the fourth wave with problems that were foreseeable.
Confidence in the city’s corona management has been shaken. The crisis team, the health authorities, but also Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) must be asked why they still made mistakes in the fourth wave or at least allowed them to make mistakes that could have been understood in the first or at most the second wave. A complete loss of control over the extent of the new contagions these days goes hand in hand with the apparent breakdown in the follow-up of contacts in order to break the chains of contagion. Doctors already describe the situation in the clinics as dramatic. Now OB Reiter is trying to get the situation under control again. That comes late, but it is sorely needed.
It remains to be seen whether the precautions are sufficient. This is also difficult to assess because not even the health authorities themselves know how many people in Munich are infected. The 2-G rule in gastronomy is a comprehensible and correct step, it will have to come for more areas of public life. It is doubtful whether Christmas markets should take place in such a location. If you don’t want to disappoint the feeders and the people of Munich at all, you should also think about a general 2-G rule there.
The announcement that the contact tracking will be completely outsourced to a private company or at least 200 additional municipal employees can be seen in depth. In the first case one has to assume that the employees in the health authorities are less proficient in their profession than a private provider. In the second case, one wonders what the crisis team as well as the heads of the city and the health authorities thought in the past few months when experts everywhere warned about the fourth wave. If not ten, 20 or 50 employees are missing, but a whopping 200, then those responsible have either completely misjudged the situation, lingered for far too long or are not fully up to their responsibility.
The city of Munich has almost 40,000 employees, so in times of crisis there must be enough of them to be able to record and update laboratory findings and track contacts. The Bundeswehr soldiers, who are not very well trained in administration and who are currently bailing out the city, are reported to be able to do this very well. For the harsh, perhaps even dramatic Corona winter, which is now looming, everyone involved must now demand this from the city. Only in this way can new trust grow.