column by
Heribert Prantl
The great crested grebe is a water bird that dives away when threatened and stays under water. The great crested grebe among the German authorities is the “Federal Center for Health Education”. It is based in Cologne with three hundred employees and can go under for much longer than the water bird: it has been doing so for 28 months, since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. It is a non-reconnaissance center and has thus become a symbol for an overall messed-up German pandemic policy that has not managed to find a plausible and trustworthy crisis communication: It was a back and forth and a back and forth. There was no plausible one Information campaign, which was certainly also due to the fact that the anti-corona measures were partially implausible; there was also no halfway convincing vaccination campaign. The health center, founded in 1967 – so it is now 55 years old – was and is a total failure in the Corona crisis.