Coronavirus: The average performance of a health department

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Nemesis depiction by Albrecht Dürer

Photo: Historical Picture Archive / Corbis / Getty Images

Last week the Chancellor made an appearance in front of the capital's press, and with a view to dying in old people's homes, she said: "It breaks my heart." At some point she also said: "We thought about the average performance of a health department is in Germany. ”One of the two sentences is still in my head.

It's not the one with the heart.

In doing so, I take empathy and pity from the Chancellor, she is neither a hard-leather lizard person, nor just a cold block of reason and power.

But more than her broken heart, the word of the "average performance of a health department" sums up her and our year with Corona: in a country that got through the first wave of the pandemic thanks to a stable administration, determined politicians and full of coffers is.

And that has major problems in the second wave, because for authorities, stable also means rigid and for politicians, resolute also means stubborn.

Nikolaus Blome, right arrow

Photo: 

Daniel Reinhardt / DPA

Born in 1963, until October 2019 was deputy editor-in-chief and political head of the "Bild" newspaper.

From 2013 to 2015 he headed the SPIEGEL capital city office as a member of the editor-in-chief, previously he was deputy »Bild« editor-in-chief.

Since August 2020 he has headed the politics department at RTL and n-tv.

The Chancellor went on to explain what everyone can know, although it leaves you speechless: The permanently postulated target number of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days marks the limit beyond which the health authorities can no longer follow up on the tracing of corona infections lose local control of the pandemic.

Or in the Chancellor's own words: "This is where 50 comes from, not on any scientific basis." If that is the case, then please no more scientists at the next meeting in the Chancellery, but administrative experts.

We are witnessing an unprecedented self-dwarfing of the most powerful woman in the world, as Angela Merkel is often called: The "50" is and will remain the target of her entire Corona policy, but it is a bottleneck for local authorities from which she is heading and Setting the pace in the pandemic of the century - from day one until today.

It's like a curse.

One would not believe how little has been done to upgrade the health authorities: next to every fax machine, many networked computers, next to every official, hundreds of helpers?

Nothing there in the fourth largest economy on the planet.

In the ancient legend, Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, is the daughter of Nyx, the daughter of the night.

The chancellor's nemesis is the German health department, reachable from

nine to five, of

which there are almost 400 in Germany.

According to Wikipedia, they are each assigned twelve tasks of the public health service, one of which is "implementation of the Infection Protection Act, for example checking citizens for the Sars-Cov-2 virus".

One would think it had been the most important task for a year.

But you wouldn't believe how little has happened this year to upgrade these offices: next to every fax machine, many networked computers, next to every civil servant, hundreds of helpers?

Nothing there in the fourth largest economy on the planet.

Less than a third of the health authorities are connected to the nationwide digital corona management "Sormas", the rest are not.

One suspects it: the federal and state governments need a long time to agree on the details.

In addition, the weekend seems sacred in many places, which is why the centrally reported numbers at the beginning of each week cannot be used.

Angela Merkel saw a parallel to the 2015/16 refugee crisis early on, but did not draw it.

Back then, too, a major crisis hit an unprepared, weak-chested part of the German administration, and hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers hit the Federal Office for Migration and the local immigration offices.

There are as many of them as there are health departments, but right at the beginning of the crisis they were upgraded under high pressure from the Chancellery.

Frank-Jürgen Weise, one of the best administration optimizers in the country, was specially appointed by Merkel for this purpose and had countable success within months.

Absolutely nothing of the sort happened when the pandemic hit health officials.

This is how it works, as some health authorities prove, which keep pace with an incidence of up to 250, as the head of the Dortmund health department reported to one of my colleagues.

In addition, he has quadrupled the number of employees to almost 400 at times and networked digitally, there is nothing good unless you do it.

It doesn't sound like rocket science.

Also last week it was rumored in Berlin that the lamentable state of the health authorities was an issue for the first time at the meeting of the chancellor with the 16 prime ministers.

In addition, the Chancellor asked the members of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group to find out from their health authorities in the constituency how things were going on site.

It sounds as if a group of daring pioneers set out for unmapped waters, to meet the people "out in the country".

Brave, brave, all due respect, you want to call out to them.

But actually you want to scream.

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