RKI tweet about Omikron stirs up maximum uncertainty - disagreement between science and politics

Created: 12/22/2021, 09:31 AM

From: Klaus Rimpel

RKI President Lothar Wieler.

© Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa

Only hours before the Corona summit, the Robert Koch Institute reports on Twitter and calls for tough restrictions.

The scientists missed the real goal.

It is an unprecedented process: Immediately before the federal-state summit on how to deal with Omikron, the Robert Koch Institute, subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Health, tweeted an alarm message demanding the opposite of what the politicians want to decide a few hours later: maximum Contact restrictions not only from December 28th, but before Christmas.

RKI President Lothar Wieler's frustration must be very deep when he snubbed the new government so openly.

Even under Jens Spahn, Wieler was increasingly unable to hide how bitter he was that politics refused to listen to the warning from science.

But Wieler and the new expert council of the federal government, to which the RKI boss belongs, do not understand that politics works differently than the virologists would like.

Corona summit: criticism of RKI boss Wieler for "maximum" frustration tweet

Olaf Scholz and the country bosses cannot look at threatening model calculations alone; they also have to take account of the employability of the population.

In this respect, it seems politically sensible to let the citizens celebrate Christmas fairly normally in order not to completely gamble away the acceptance of tougher restrictions later on.

Wieler's “maximum” frustration tweet may have aimed to put pressure on politicians.

What he has created, however, is maximum uncertainty among the citizens.