There is a nice return: mulled wine noses, Czech fairy tale films, the blinking LED moose from the cellar. And then there is: winter again, waves again, Karl Lauterbach again. Before the Maybrit Illner broadcast, the latter tapped the Germans’ emotional weakness with a warning finger: Christmas. The party is in danger, tweeted the SPD health expert with a worried look at the record number of new infections reported by the RKI the previous day.
So six weeks before the domestic mass migration and the shopping spree you sit in front of dark red spots on the Corona card, increasing patient numbers in the hospitals and gray November days. And before a corona round, to which Maybrit Illner under the title “Winter again, no plan again?” Invites guests that have often been seen – and hears suggestions that are often heard there.
Between breakthroughs in vaccinations, deaths in old people’s homes, record incidence values and two governments, the executive minister of the Chancellery, Helge Braun, sits in the Berlin studio as the main responsible person with folded hands and summarizes the situation as “even more annoying than last year”.
How difficult it is for all guests to discuss concrete steps becomes apparent from the first yes-no question. Should there be an imprint for the nursing staff? The chairman of the board of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Andreas Gassen, says that this is “a difficult decision”. After all, Karl Lauterbach pragmatically calls for mandatory tests for nursing staff. Christine Falk, President of the German Society for Immunology, says with a wink that this is “a political question” and appeals to the (unvaccinated) people’s sense of responsibility. The CDU district administrator Stephan Pusch rushes into the feel-good debate with a lounge sound: “We’re rowing around the bush here!”
In the deep canyon of the dilemma
Finally, Chancellery Minister Braun apologized in the deep ravine of the dilemma: Because there is a shortage of nurses in Germany, there is fear that the nurses could terminate or move away if the government forces them to vaccinate. He thinks of the “attempt at extermination”.
The complexity of the situation soon calls for the subjunctive. Big goals that fail because of small words. Helge Braun emphasizes that the “most annoying” thing is really the thing with the unvaccinated. Without them you would have mastered the winter wonderfully. And as if the republic had lived on the idyllic film set of “The Girls from Immenhof” for the past two years, he says: “What we have to do now is to make the urgency of the situation clear.”
The CDU politician Stephan Pusch complains that the suspension of the free tests was used as a “club”. Now even fewer people are being tested because there is no longer any incentive at all. In general, nobody checked him at lunch here in Berlin today. This causes Lauterbach to scream: “Yes, this is a huge scandal!”
The switch to ZDF studio manager Michael Bewerunge in front of Tel Aviv’s luminous skyscrapers acts like a discussion booster. The journalist said that the booster vaccinations in Israel were working well, that there were no restrictions in public life, and that a third vaccination had increased the antibodies by 50 times.
Only Lauterbach does not go along
Andreas Gassen, behind which the Rhine shimmers a little less glamorously in Düsseldorf, then announced that the elderly had to be vaccinated first, “and then we can do it”. Christine Falk nods with shining eyes, too, yes, we can do that. Even Stephan Pusch says: “I also think we can do it.”
Only one does not go along. Karl Lauterbach recalls the indispensable reopening of the vaccination centers, draws out Lauterbach’s midnight formula, shares the optimism from the daily practice vaccinations times speed minus resistance. “Then it will take ten weeks.”
When Illner asked at the end how it could be that there was a Freedom Day Light in Saarland and only PCR tests counted in Baden-Württemberg, Braun replied with a remedy that has lost a lot of its effectiveness in the past few months: ” This difference calls for the prime ministers to sit down. ” Illner yells “Ah, there he is again”, Andreas Gassen grins, shaking his head. Even Karl Lauterbach laughs.
And thus with a look back to the future.
Marlene Knobloch is a freelance, streaming author, but dreams of televisions in the kitchen and bedroom. Every Sunday she could doze off linearly to the come-good-for-the-week wishes of the night magazine presenters with thousands of viewers in Germany. Until then, while peeling potatoes, she watches old Harald Schmidt episodes on her laptop.