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Anne Will with guests: "Who of us can exclude something at the moment?"
Photo: NDR / Wolfgang Borrs
The real thriller before the talk was not the "crime scene", but the endless consultation of the candidates for the CDU chairmanship about a postponement of the party congress.
The tension reached its peak when the journalist Robin Alexander reported on Twitter: "It's getting tight for @ArminLaschet if he still wants to make it to @annewill as announced".
What Anne Will commented with "sweat" before she could report an hour later: "He's on the way".
Uff.
It should be the only relief that evening.
Armin Laschet, who arrived "ten minutes ago", indicated that a CDU party congress for the free choice of a candidate for chancellor will probably not take place as planned.
We have "no state of emergency", but in his opinion - Friedrich Merz has a different one - a party must also be a role model.
Does Germany still have the right strategy?
The topic of the program, back from the autumn break a week earlier especially for the emergency: "Does Germany" still have the right strategy in view of the exponentially exploding numbers of infections? "
First of all, Michael Müller, SPD, defended the situation in the capital as the governing body: "We cannot put a police officer in front of every door," the responsibility of the individual is simply beyond control in a city with four million people.
With a view to the second wave, Müller would like to avoid a ban on accommodation and closed schools for Berlin, but: "Who of us can exclude something at the moment?"
Julian Nida-Rümelin, SPD, laments "a strategic dead end".
The consensus is that a lockdown like the one in spring "should not be repeated under any circumstances".
Greater use of the "tracking app, 21st century" would be necessary, not a "mess of paper like in restaurants".
"All fundamental rights" are currently being violated, "starting with Article 1 through Article 19".
Plea for infection protection over data protection
But the right to informational self-determination is overestimated, according to Nida-Rümelin.
Silicon Valley and the tax office would know "everything about us" anyway, so why not the health department for once during the crisis?
Connected from Frankfurt, Kaschlin Butt from the Wiesbaden health department sees that too.
Your authority could "no longer perform the follow-up promptly", a connection of the app to the office would bring a lot of relief.
"The technology could do much, much more," said the doctor, "one shouldn't put data protection before infection protection to the same extent."
Gerhart Baum, FDP, as Federal Minister of the Interior at the time also dealt with a certain threat (RAF), is now intervening.
He says one shouldn't "hold data protection responsible for everything".
An app is of no use "if people don't take part. You have to have trust!".
An automatic forwarding of personal data to the health authorities, which can also be switched off with a click, is emerging as a tightening measure.
In any case, both Müller and Laschet support such a regulation in principle.
Will satisfied: "And two prime ministers are already in favor!"
Decisions have to be understandable
Baum sticks to it and says to the address of the decision-makers: "Gentlemen, at the moment you are not acting according to the Basic Law".
Parliaments must be included in all decisions: "They must strive for the approval of those elected by the people!", If necessary by subsequent legitimation of decisions made.
It is "a nightmare that we live in".
Laschet replies: "The parliaments were busy during this time", but "parliamentary decisions took too long" on some things.
Baum insists that some of these decisions are incomprehensible - if, for example, the tram is full but the Philharmonie is empty, the feeling quickly arises: "Something is wrong there".
Conviction can "only be achieved if you do not allow something that drifts apart".
Are the pre-ordered corona tests enough?
Especially if what the virologist and entrepreneur Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff predicts is true: "We won't be through in January, we won't be through in June either".
Even with the pre-ordered corona tests you have to "manage well" up to and including December, as Laschet says.
And "new measures" alone would not cause the curve to flatten out.
Nida-Rümelin sums up: "Lockdown is not the panacea", it consists rather in "measures that are well founded" with "comprehensible criteria", on the basis of which decisions can then be made across the board while preserving parliamentary powers.
That sounds nice, but it's not a panacea either.
So is Germany still pursuing "the right strategy"?
That will show.
But there is no other strategy, as it became clear again that evening.
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