opinion
State Minister of Health
Corona measures: Thanks to the pandemic, but learned nothing
Vaccination centers closed or vaccination centers open? The health ministers of the federal states have to decide.
© Sina Schuldt / DPA
The health ministers meet in Lindau and decide – what? To offer corona tests free of charge again? To reopen vaccination centers? The German corona policy is reminiscent of an ineffective antibiotic therapy that was ended too early and by feeling.
The fourth wave is rolling across the country even more relentlessly than its predecessors. Almost 34,000 people were recently infected with the corona virus – a new high. Most experts also do not believe that the situation will improve significantly over the winter. Vaccinations prevent severe Covid-19 courses, but on the one hand the vaccination rate in Germany is still shamefully low, and on the other hand, politicians and some people behave as if the pandemic was basically almost over.
Abolished free corona tests
The traffic light coalition, i.e. the presumed future federal government, is planning the end of the “epidemic situation of national scope” to which many corona measures are linked. Free corona tests were frivolously abolished, although vaccinated people can also be infected and contagious. North Rhine-Westphalia overturns the mask requirement in schools, which is to be granted to all students, but certainly does not help to keep the virus in check. Booster vaccinations are generously recommended, without knowing where and how they should be introduced to the people.
The state health ministers are now meeting at Lake Constance to discuss the corona course for the next few weeks. The decisions and discussions of the past few days give the impression that they have learned nothing from 2020. On the contrary. As if in mockery, the head of the federal government, Jens Spahn, demands that the vaccination centers, which were only closed two months ago, be reopened – as if they were café terraces on which you only need to quickly lift a few chairs and tables.
If the pain goes, the incisions go
Unfortunately, all of this is reminiscent of the antibiotic phenomenon. People like to stop taking the pills as soon as the pain disappears. Although the doctors always warn you to use the whole pack, otherwise the effect will fizzle out. It seems to have been similar with politics and the corona measures for the last 20 months: the incisions go with the first pain. Understandable, but short-sighted. Above all, however, it is annoying because none of what is happening on the incidence, vaccination and intensive care unit front would be surprising or we would not have had it one way or the other.
It’s not just that the virus itself is troubling people and causing overwhelmed nursing staff to flee to other professions. The constant hustle and bustle decisions in Berlin and elsewhere are no less tiring. How can understanding for all the measures arise when every 2G host knows more about the vaccination status of his guests than their own employer? At least when there is control, which does not always seem to be the rule anyway.
But maybe there is still hope. In the middle of this tirade about the club of wandering ladies and gentlemen, the message bursts that Spahn and the medical associations have agreed that everyone can get a booster whose last vaccination was six months ago. Sounds like a clear and comprehensible rule. Now it just has to stick with it.