Friday, December 03, 2021
Corona talk at Illner
“Pull yourself by the belt, Mr. Kretschmer”
By Marko Schlichting
The prime ministers, together with the current chancellor Merkel and the next chancellor Scholz, have agreed on further tightening of the fight against Corona. They especially apply to the unvaccinated. Maybrit Illner wanted to know from her guests whether that was really enough.
First of all, the answer to the evening’s question: Will Karl Lauterbach become Minister of Health in the new traffic light government that will be elected by the Bundestag next Wednesday? Or is it Andrea Nahles? Lauterbach, one of the guests of Maybrit Illner’s talk group, answered the question evasively: “I am confident that the SPD will occupy the position very competently.” We’ll know more on Monday.
On Thursday, the Prime Ministers of the federal states, together with Chancellor Angela Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz, agreed on tightening the Infection Protection Act. It provides for a quasi-lockdown for unvaccinated people who can no longer go out to eat, shop or use wellness services. In areas with high incidence values, this also applies to those who have been vaccinated: There, catering establishments are no longer allowed to open if this is decided on site. But can these measures really help to break the fourth corona wave? And what is the point of a total compulsory vaccination?
Questions that the guests at Maybrit Illner asked themselves in an exciting discussion, in which there was a rather violent and brief exchange of blows between the future Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer.
“Small and small had to stop urgently”
Health expert Karl Lauterbach is certain that the resolutions passed on Thursday will be sufficient. They were not taken ad hoc. At the weekend he got together with other scientists and considered which measures would slow down the wave and then informed Olaf Scholz about this. “It was good that science had an enormous influence,” says the SPD politician, who led the first talks of a science council that could advise the new Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the future.
Saxony’s Prime Minister Kretschmer thinks of the precarious situation in his federal state and thinks correctly that the “eternal little thing” has now come to an end. It was right to “introduce protective measures in advance,” he says. “Saxony now has to continue working.” “It is wise, if the situation changes, to adapt the instruments as well,” says Buschmann. The politician had completely misjudged the situation in October. Today he explains that the Infection Protection Act has been adapted to the current situation. He does not allow criticism of the work of the traffic light parties to go through: “Never before has a government and majority transition in Germany been so complex,” he points out. Lauterbach assists him: The new chancellor could not take over the business of government if he was not yet in office.
“We are in an emergency,” says immunologist Christine Falk. The President of the German Society for Immunology sounds the alarm: “If we don’t get the numbers under control, it is foreseeable that the capacities in the intensive care units will no longer be sufficient before Christmas,” says Falk. It demands that all people in Germany take the new restrictions seriously. “It’s up to everyone’s actions that we get the numbers down.”
The scientist later explains how a vaccine combats the corona virus and why a vaccination against the new omicron variant could also help. She takes a survival game as a model – a fascinating idea. She speaks of t-cells, of phagocytes, of interceptors. And she explains that the new virus variant can only shoot down the interceptors. But then the remaining killer cells are still there, which could attack and destroy the virus with the help of a vaccine. An explanation that seems beyond the imagination of Buschmann and Kretschmer. One doesn’t make a face, the other looks at the floor. Perhaps the two of them are also deeply rooted in the battle of words that they had fought shortly before.
“You can’t talk to me like that”
Kretschmer had tried to show ways of increasing the vaccination rate. Controls are necessary for this, but something must also be done against anti-vaccination opponents in social networks. As an example, he cited groups in the Telegram intelligence service “who proclaim malicious and corrosive things” and called on the future Justice Minister Buschmann to do something about it. He said: “Other things are more important”, and he also gave an example: The federal government made money available to expand vaccination capacities in Saxony. “I would urge you to take this money and put it in vaccination centers.”
And then it got down to business. Kretschmer: You couldn’t talk to him like that. “If someone comes from Berlin and tells me something about paying money, then it’s over!” Buschmann: Kretschmer may pull himself on the belt, please. He now has to solve the catastrophic situation in his state. “It’s gotten out of hand, and now you’re trying to blame it on me and the Bund. It doesn’t work that way.” In the end, it is Karl Lauterbach who makes sure that everyone loves each other again. The most recent contact evaluations on Saxony showed a very positive trend. “The measures are working,” he says, and: “We have to stick together, otherwise we won’t get any further.”
And when it comes to compulsory vaccinations, everyone agrees again: They are for it. But one must clearly explain the difference between compulsory vaccination and compulsory vaccination, demand Buschmann and Kretschmer, and it must be made clear to people that there is no physical compulsion to vaccinate. At the end of the day, Lauterbach sums up the whole discussion in a single sentence: “We mustn’t lose any time in the pandemic.”