As head of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery has adopted a gruff tone. His statements about the pandemic hit the headlines. Has the functionary become a populist?
Frank Ulrich Montgomery on the ARD talk show by Anne Will. In November he accused the unvaccinated of “tyranny” there.
It’s a simple trick, but it almost always works: if a politician or official wants to get the maximum attention possible for a statement, he or she drops it in the middle of a holiday. So it was hardly a coincidence that the head of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, made a name for himself on Boxing Day. A court ruling recently passed in Lower Saxony served as a ramp. It forbids the state to only allow vaccinated and convalescents in retail.
Montgomery does not believe in the verdict and went far: “I am against the fact that little judges stand up and, as in Lower Saxony, 2G in the retail trade because they do not think it is proportionate,” he told the “world”. The court presumed to overturn the hard-won decisions of political and scientific bodies.
Montgomery apparently cares just as little that “little judges” ultimately represent the entire state, as well as the fact that controversial political decisions usually end up in court and have to stand there. The loud contradiction to his statement was therefore to be expected and is probably part of the calculation. Every social media consultant knows that it is often the angry backlash that generates broad public attention.
It is not uncommon for the critics to exaggerate just as much as the object of criticism, which undermines their credibility. However, the former German Family Minister Kristina Schröder found the right tone: “That is the language in which the AfD also despises the values and institutions of our democracy,” she wrote on Twitter to Montgomery’s scolding.
“Tyranny of the Unvaccinated”
Montgomery is 69 years old and not the type who lets himself be carried away to hearty slogans in the affect – he deliberately over-turns the screw. When asked in a talk show about the low vaccination rate in Germany, he sensed a “tyranny of the unvaccinated” in November. He had thought carefully about the statement beforehand, he later explained. After all, it is about “waking up” the citizens.
Montgomery seems to have missed the fact that many people have long since switched off completely when it comes to the pandemic. One reason for the pandemic fatigue is probably that the appeals from medicine and politics are losing credibility due to constant repetition and sharpening of tone.
Chairman of the board of the World Medical Association – this is Montgomery’s official title. The organization consists of 112 national member associations. According to the “Ärzteblatt”, Montgomery has the task of “leading the World Medical Association politically and organisationally”. His experience as a functionary dates back to the early 1990s. For almost twenty years he was head of the German medical union Marburger Bund, after which he moved to the German Medical Association as vice-president.
He doesn’t regret anything
As a specialist in radiology, Montgomery is not one of those officials who has not worked in their profession for decades. Until 2018 he was senior physician at the Radiological Clinic at the University Hospital Hamburg. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, he was looking for the public. In contrast to the new German health minister Karl Lauterbach, he did not attract attention through hysteria or alarmism. Just like the virus, however, the climate of debate has also changed, has become rougher and more dangerous.
Montgomery is an example of this development. He recently reported on the record that he did not regret any of his steep statements about the pandemic. In this you can see steadfastness or further evidence that Montgomery has turned into a populist.
He is often right on the matter. The unvaccinated are actually making the pandemic worse and facing an increasingly annoyed majority. Accusing them of tyranny should not encourage any of them to vaccinate. It is just as counterproductive to speculate publicly about a corona variant that would be as “contagious as Delta and as deadly as Ebola”.
When confronted by the “world”, Montgomery said that his comparison made no claim to “have anything to do with science.” Most people would expect that from a medical professional who wants to represent the global medical profession.