The news could hardly be more dramatic. “Bavaria’s paediatricians are overwhelmed”, “Clinics are closing their emergency rooms due to overwork”, “Intensive care units at the limit”. Aren’t these good reasons to keep masks compulsory on buses and trains? You can see it that way, but the headlines are from 2019, 2018, 2017. From a time when people still thought of this Mexican bottled beer when they heard the term “Corona” or of the 1990s eurodance band of the same name. In any case, nobody thought of a mask requirement at the time.
Today, in December 2022, hospitals and clinics are again heavily burdened. With the difference that the corona pandemic has flattened out a lot, but is still there. And yet: It is at least justifiable that the state government takes another step back into a less rule-bound life – and abolishes the mask requirement in local public transport.
No, Corona is not and was not a harmless flu, as some stubborn people still claim. But Corona alone is no longer responsible for the fact that hospitals are again at the limit. The mask requirement was correct, but it would be questionable to extend this requirement now on the grounds that the mask also protects against influenza and against the RS virus, both of which are making clinics harder to deal with than Corona. According to this logic, the mask requirement on buses and trains could be extended forever, because there will always be viruses and flu waves, and protection against them remains important.
Sure, it would be desirable if as many people as possible continued to wear masks to protect their vulnerable fellow human beings. But if you can’t think of anything else in a pandemic that is gradually flattening out than to keep extending the mask requirement, you are above all obscuring the view of the structural problems in the healthcare system, which, according to the headlines from back then, existed before Corona. Suspending the minimum staffing levels, as advocated by Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) and Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), can only be a short-term means of solving these problems.
In the long term, this would mean that the staff would be even more burdened – and the patients would be cared for worse rather than better. Even the five million euros that Holetschek has now promised the Bavarian children’s hospitals will change little in the situation, as the Minister of Health knows, of course. Politicians must now finally show that they are willing to improve the personnel situation and the working conditions of doctors and nursing staff to improve sustainably. There is no need to wear a mask for this.