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Festival hall converted into a vaccination center in Hesse
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
British vacationers will find it hard to believe how lucky they are in summer.
On the beaches of Mallorca and Ibiza, the loungers in the first row will still be free in the late morning.
Far and wide no German towels in sight.
Because Germany will be at home when other countries can travel again.
Great Britain wants to have 75 percent of the population vaccinated against the corona virus by July 14 and thus achieve herd immunity.
There is probably nothing to prevent a vacation in the south.
Even under optimistic assumptions, it will take three months longer in Germany before we are ready.
But it's most cozy at home anyway.
But not for everyone.
Because the summer and thus the high phase of the federal election campaign should be rather uncomfortable for politics.
When the television images of English people celebrating on empty Mediterranean beaches flicker into German living rooms, the failure of the government will no longer be denied.
Lack of imagination and willingness to act
But it is not too late.
We can avert the horror scenario of another lost year in lockdown.
To do that, we need to quickly remove the greatest obstacle that stands in our way.
This is neither a lack of money nor a lack of opportunities, but above all a lack of imagination and the will to act.
Like the rabbit in front of the queue, German politicians have been watching the companies that deliver the coveted vaccine drop by drop for weeks.
The manufacturer's information on delivery quantities and deadlines change on a weekly basis.
It is still unclear exactly who can deliver what and when.
Berlin wants to somehow save itself over the finish line by waiting and deciding.
This inaction costs us ten billion euros every month - and above all human lives.
Moritz Schularick
born 1975, is Professor of Macroeconomics and Director of the Macrofinance Lab at the University of Bonn.
Gustav Oertzen
is a management consultant and lecturer for management, Leuphana University Lüneburg.
A month ago we proposed offering high rewards for the production and delivery of vaccines in order to give companies a financial incentive to expand their capacities.
Nothing happened and valuable time was lost.
We are now slowly but surely getting to the point where financial incentives alone are no longer sufficient, but rather production has to be organized as an emergency economy in a quasi-war economy.
In concrete terms, this means that the country's resources are being geared towards the one purpose of producing more vaccine quickly.
Government regulation temporarily replaces the market in certain areas.
Money solves many, but not all, problems
Of course, rewards and incentives are, in principle, the best option because money solves a lot of problems.
But not all.
Complex contractual ties cannot be broken overnight, even with a lot of money.
Only the state can say at short notice with emergency violence: Vaccine will be produced from now on.
If the idea of such a war economy sounds too martial to you, you have to put up with the question of how many more than 50,000 deaths are still necessary.
At the beginning of the First World War, Walther Rathenau needed a few weeks to convert the German economy, which had been cut off from important raw materials, to war production.
At that time it was about the entire German economy.
Today it's about 20 liter bioreactors,
in which the active ingredient can be produced for 750 million Biontech doses a year.
It's also about reagents, clean rooms and micro-mixers.
But all of these are solvable challenges.
The encouraging news is that Biontech managed to set up an additional production line in Marburg within just a few weeks.
If we bundle all the resources of the German and European pharmaceutical industry, we might be able to do it even faster next time.
But we have to have the courage and accept the challenge.
Narrow horizon of Berlin politics
For this we need a crisis team with authority in which politics, the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies and science are represented.
The committee would decide which production is best scalable in the short term.
Corporations such as Bayer, Merck or Sanofi would then produce the active ingredient from Biontech or from AstraZeneca on state instructions if it can be produced more easily in larger quantities.
Other production has to wait.
Patents are used to manufacture under license.
It will be billed later.
This is not a declaration of no confidence in the address of Biontech, AstraZeneca and Co., but realism.
A single company does not have short-term access to all economic resources.
Only the state can do that overnight.
Much more would be possible if we dared.
The cost of doing nothing is enormous.
More people will die because the horizon of Berlin politics is too narrow.
What is preventing us from winning the war against the virus is currently primarily the wall in Berlin's minds.
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