A permanent lockdown and many contradictions: Obligation to appear in open-plan offices, but closed children's playgrounds.
Plasberg asked: Is there still a strategy?
Frank Plasberg chose a controversial topic for his "hard but fair" talk on Monday (January 11th): "Longer, harder, less unimaginative: How useful is the permanent lockdown?"
Economic expert Hüther wanted to know from Prime Minister Dreyer: What is our idea of the “new normal”?
Virologist Alexander Kekulé criticized the policy of the federal government - the lockdown could last until “June or July” if no alternatives were taken.
"Hard but fair" on the subject of Corona lockdown - these guests discussed with:
Malu Dreyer (SPD) -
Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate
Prof. Alexander Kekulé -
Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Dr.
Cihan Çelik - Senior Physician in
Pneumology on the Corona isolation ward in Darmstadt Clinic
Prof. Michael Hüther -
economist, director of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research
Susanne Gaschke -
world
author
Corona-Talk: Dreyer admits - she doesn't know anyone who is not negative about the measures
The measures have been tightened again, the situation remains tense.
Frank Plasberg's "hard but fair" panel discussion in the first tackles the subject of
corona lockdown
controversially.
The questions sound provocative: Do politicians still know what they are doing or is it all already actionism?
Are there alternatives?
And if so, which ones?
Rhineland-Palatinate's
Prime Minister Malu Dreyer
(SPD) took some wind out of the sails of the critics at the beginning and admitted contrite: "The lockdown makes you weary".
You don't know anyone who isn't negative about it.
But she quickly swings back to the official government course: “It's about human lives.
That is why I am convinced that the measures are the right ones, because we have to get down from the high number of infections. ”Of course there are many doubts - but after weighing it up, you always come to the same result.
"Hart but fair" (ARD): Why aren't the clinics better supported?
World
journalist
Susanne Gaschke
strongly disagrees.
She asks whether the incidence value alone is the right yardstick.
The enemy is death that
rages
in
old people's
homes.
You have to counter it there with preventive means.
The journalist asks the decision-maker: Why not support the
clinics
better?
Why shouldn't the people who are
on the front lines
in the fight against the
coronavirus
have their hands free?
Many citizens in the country no longer understand this either.
Economic expert
Michael Hüther takes the
same line.
He “shudders”, he says, at how one-dimensional politics is planning - and how little foresighted.
The question should actually be: what will
happen
in
winter 2022
?
Hüther near Plasberg: "Naive to believe that Corona would be over in winter 2022"
Dreyer wants to spread confidence and soothes with the thesis that enough people will then be
vaccinated
.
But Hüther doesn't let her finish.
The economist becomes direct: It would be naive to believe that the
virus
would then disappear!
“The virus will also be there next winter,” he predicts.
We should already be asking ourselves how we were going to deal with it.
What is our idea of this “new normal”?
Hüther is picking up speed: every time a
lockdown
when the incidence values rise?
How can this be reconciled with the attitude from 2017, when over 25,000 flu deaths played no role at all in the public perception?
"Why do we still know so little about the #infection process?"
The economist from @iw_koeln Prof. @michael_huether calls for #hartaberfair @DasErste to analyze more.
#Corona #Dauerlockdown pic.twitter.com/uTo3CcKXO8
- tough but fair (@hartaberfair) January 11, 2021
Gaschke also supports this argument: "It is simply impossible to permanently zero the virus in a free, open and globally intertwined society", she predicts.
"Politicians have to say goodbye to the illusion of wanting to get rid of the really big problem with the really big hammer."
"Hard but fair": Kekulé calls Corona policy "Navigating in the fog" - Lockdown until July 2021?
When Hüther also brings the battered economic performance into play - the "part that secures our income", Dreyer becomes visibly restless and tries to appease the critic with "here I am with you".
In the end,
Plasberg has
to cut off what is angry and put it off until later.
Virologist Alexander Kekulé
replies casually as usual: "I don't think it's so bad that we have a new disease that will plague us a little longer".
He proposes a private reporting system that would
relieve
the
health authorities
- and thus
enable them to
deal with
higher incidences
.
If you actually want to push the value to 25 (as SPD politician Karl Lauterbach had called for), it could be “June or July”, depending on the weather, before the lockdown is lifted, he warns.
But Kekulé also sees alternatives.
The virologist calls the current corona policy “navigating in the fog”.
He also accuses federal politicians of long ago failures: the rapid antigen tests have been around since March - but at that time it was said “we don't need that”.
With the help of other measures - such as
masks at the workplace
and better
protection of the elderly
- one could proceed more selectively than “with this lockdown, put a concrete slab over it and say 'it has to work sometime'.” In fact, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) spoke. on Tuesday morning internally from further long weeks of “hard measures”.
"Parallel to the health department, a private reporting system," suggests the virologist Prof. @AlexanderKekule (@UniHalle) at #hartaberfair @DasErste on the topic of #Corona and the #Dauerlockdown.
pic.twitter.com/9swVaaDJm8
- tough but fair (@hartaberfair) January 11, 2021
Dreyer admits that at the beginning there were clear figures and measures to be derived from them.
In the meantime, the situation is different: “We always have to carefully weigh up what can be done and what cannot be done and then act with appropriate measures and hygiene concepts.” There was an awkward silence in the group.
Plasberg lets people from the population have their say in the program, several clips show the worries and needs in the respective areas.
An elderly man says that he has only had one visit to his sick wife in the past seven weeks.
Another writes: "The Corona rules have done something to me, I've never been so uninspired and hopeless." A woman explains that she now drinks more in the evening and that is probably the case for many ...
Conclusion on the “hard but fair” talk
The new year brings little new, but the old problems and arguments are turned around again.
However, there are still arguments about detailed questions - as in this program - and that's a good thing.
But the question remains: do we need to talk more about the effects of the measures?
And if so, how?
Without
violating
ethics
?