When, if not now?
Team caution must become team foresight
A commentary by Nikolaus Blome
2/14/2022, 1:21 p.m
The Chancellery found it difficult to accept the start of the corona easing. The step came late, but is still correct. The question now is whether the federal government will also drop compulsory vaccination. Again, that would be a mistake.
The new federal government came late, fairly late with its plans to gradually relax the corona restrictions and to phase them out almost completely on March 20th. But at least she’s coming. When, if not now?
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach found it far too difficult to take this step (with) they were driven to do so by public and political pressure. In the end, they had less than half the population in polls behind their “Team Caution.” That’s why others will thank you for the fact that people in Germany will soon be able to take a deep breath.
The easing across the board marks two crucial points that the “Caution Team” found surprisingly difficult to accept. On the one hand, it has been obvious for some time that even gigantic numbers of new infections are no longer reflected in the occupancy and ultimately overburdening of hospitals. This chain is broken – but with it the central chain of justification for almost all protective measures. The political goal was never to prevent as many infections as possible, only the hardliners of a “zero Covid” strategy wanted that. The aim was always to save the hospitals from collapsing and not to have to postpone tens of thousands of “normal” operations. That’s why politics had to rethink, rethink – and that was difficult for her in the Chancellery and in the Ministry of Health.
It could go better this time
Secondly, the federal government has apparently also given up the goal of using the pressure of the restrictions to persuade the unvaccinated to vaccinate after all. Almost three million over 60-year-olds have not even had two vaccinations, so they will most likely become infected. This is still incomprehensible. But: The rest of the country should no longer have to adjust to this, at least the restrictions for those who have been vaccinated should end. That is a risk, but one that will primarily be borne by the unvaccinated if it does not lead to overburdening of the hospitals.
The incorrigible fundamental opponents of the restrictions will celebrate the whole thing as a late victory over “the dictatorial Corona policy”. Shall they. They argue like people who say it’s daylight at 1 a.m. and repeat the same thing at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. If, at 9:00 a.m., they say one last time that it’s light and immediately shout, “See, we were right the whole time!”, that’s just another mistake.
The question is whether the federal government will give in before this expected storm and also drop the vaccination requirement. From what is known, it will not be needed to combat the now declining omicron wave, or will come too late. As a kind of “vaccination obligation in reserve”, however, it would be the appropriate means, finally before the wave to come – to prepare adequately for the coming autumn, which could well bring another corona variant. Forward-looking politics has always been in short supply over the past two years, and that in the land of the cautious and prudent. Things could go better this time – but only if the new federal government has more power than the old one had.