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Demonstration against Corona requirements in Munich (in February)
Photo: Leonhard Simon / imago images
To anticipate one thing: It is elusive that it is not possible in Germany to vaccinate people faster in such an emergency.
It's crazy that we don't test a lot more already.
And of course it also looks confused when our corona crisis managers give this and now that incidence value as a guide.
Thomas Fricke, arrow to the right
Born in 1965, has been running the WirtschaftsWunder internet portal since 2007.
From 2002 to 2012 he was the chief economist of the »Financial Times Deutschland«.
He is co-founder of the »Forum New Economy«, in which experts have come together to develop a new economic leitmotif.
After a year of pandemic, some of the criticism presented in endless loops in the country now sounds at least just as crazy - especially from those who like to lecture from the sidelines about what "the people in the country" (supposedly) want.
I would like to decide for myself (in principle I don't want Mr Habeck to decide whether the government will "leave me alone").
Who knows, maybe a lot of what Ms. Merkel and the others have been doing for months works so confused precisely because they try to follow the rollercoaster criticism somehow.
Instead of ending the pandemic.
When virologists and epidemiologists explained to us last year that different criteria from the R value to the incidence had to be taken into account in a pandemic, it was soon said from the Nölerecke: The people needed clear clues.
Nobody can understand that anymore.
What Ms. Merkel and the appendix put the 50 incidence value on.
In the meantime every Kreisblatt editor-in-chief is excited at how stupid it is to "slavishly" tie everything to an incidence value;
There is no scientific evidence for this - which no one has said and certainly does not go so well in the rounds with the Chancellor.
Only recently it was said that one should have a clearer guideline.
And then it goes from 50 to 35. Arbitrariness!
Here, too, a bit cheap as a criticism: there were suddenly mutations - and a reason to re-brand the brand.
The British economist John Maynard Keynes is said to have countered such a situation: “When the facts change, I change my mind.
What do you do?"
Some criticisms also seem unstable when it comes to the right measures.
Similar ping-pong: At first it was said that the rulers had to take strict measures with no major exceptions.
When they then made a more or less consistent shutdown, the first came to say that such a shutdown was far too undifferentiated.
You have to look at which regions are affected and how, and include the number of beds and in general.
Which is then again not correct when there are plans with a number of graduated rules, like this week: Then it is said that this is much too complicated now, nobody understands why the driving schools are now allowed to open earlier - and zoos.
And other businesses from this or that incidence value.
This is slapstick criticism.
There are also no scientifically strict criteria for the measures, as we Germans like to have.
It can only ever be an attempt to get closer, to adapt to the virus situation, and that cannot be done without a bit of arbitrariness.
Many an international comparison gets something pseudo-clever.
What does it help to praise the Austrians because they came faster with rapid tests - as a prerequisite for public contacts and in schools - if the incidence figures in the country have increased drastically again since the easing, while they remained stable in our country?
That doesn't speak against testing, just then Austria's course doesn't work as a model.
This is only partially true even in Israel, where the incidence is 400 despite turbo vaccination.
The virus has no heart for entrepreneurship
Even the justified criticism of the kinkiness in the procurement of vaccines gains something absurd - if it comes from people who declare a national debt panic the next day because someone said that one could consider suspending the debt brake in 2022 as well .
There is something tragic-comic when local business representatives complain to themselves in a global health crisis that there has to be a reliable opening plan because companies need planning security.
At your command, virus.
How hollow this is as a wish becomes apparent now that there is such a concrete plan - but it doesn't help much either, since all openings are made under the (reasonable) reservation that the third wave does not escalate in between.
So much for planning security in times of epidemics.
The virus just has no heart for entrepreneurship.
And the bureaucracy?
Wouldn't vaccination go faster without so many pieces of paper?
For sure.
The criticism is only a bit ineffective in a country in which up to a third of people do not want to be vaccinated because of a vague fear of the side effects - and the unfortunate communication about the effectiveness of a vaccine is enough to make them ready to be vaccinated for this substance collapse and leave millions of cans lying around unused.
If everything wasn't injected immediately in Germany, then it was also to use forms to reassure people that nothing was injected there.
Don't make it any better.
The German just likes things that have the official stamp on them.
Once again: All of this does not mean that the Chancellor and Prime Minister do everything well.
On the contrary.
There's a lot of madness in there.
And surprisingly little consistency.
The vaccination disaster is one.
But all of this could come from the fact that they always want to do justice to what is so crisscrossed in the country - sometimes too much incidence, sometimes too little;
sometimes too much lockdown, sometimes too little.
Which is often at least as confused as what logically comes out of governing.
And be it because the permanent crisis easily drives us all crazy.
It would be presumptuous to say how it's done now.
Pandemic teaches humility.
As things stand, only three things are obvious: that no money and no effort are too much to accelerate vaccinations with seriously effective vaccines in a large national act;
and to offer rapid tests everywhere as quickly as possible;
And if necessary, always rely on the strictest possible contact restrictions as long as not enough people in the country are immune.
A pandemic is just a pandemic.
If there is one insight from this crisis, it is certainly not that our rulers are too stupid per se (idle), hold on to 35 for too long or too short - or open flower shops too early.
Or that criticism never hurts.
The deeper lesson will be that it is high time to modernize and equip our state as it should be for such a rich country in the 21st century.
No matter how much that costs.
That could help to get out of the current crisis faster - via turbo vaccination and quick testing.
It could also protect us from the next one.
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