For warning shots to colleagues: Christian Drosten
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Christian Drosten proposes that the right to speak on Corona be distributed by mandate. The star virologist reveals an increasingly autocratic understanding of science. A guest post.
ILast week, Christian Drosten, head of the Institute for Virology at the Berlin Charité, announced his withdrawal from the Council of Experts, which the Federal Government had commissioned to evaluate the Infection Protection Act and the previous measures to combat corona based on a decision by the Bundestag. Drosten, who gave one of the reasons for his departure that such a complex task could not be performed on a voluntary basis, is not going with just any member of this body, but with the “Nation’s Corona Enlightener”, as he once described in the “Handelsblatt”. became.
At the end of March, the Berlin virologist had already withdrawn from the “Coronavirus Update” podcast format, which had been produced by NDR since the end of February 2020, in which he had previously answered questions about current questions in his field in eighty episodes. As reasons for his resignation, he gave the high workload and the desire to be able to devote more time to research and his duties as institute director.