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Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD)
Photo: CLEMENS BILAN / EPA
When the corona pandemic came to Germany, there was little research knowledge - so there were a lot of restrictions.
In the past few weeks, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) had already criticized some measures as wrong, especially with regard to the closure of kindergartens and schools.
Now he's dubbed some other limitations "bullshit," too.
"What nonsense was, if I can speak so freely, these rules are out there," said Lauterbach on the ZDF program "Markus Lanz" on Thursday evening.
He was referring, for example, to the temporary ban on going jogging without a mask.
“Of course it is clear that there were excesses,” said Lauterbach, who has been Health Minister since December 2021.
The states would have massively overstimulated, especially Bavaria.
The long daycare and school closures were also a mistake.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Jens Spahn (CDU) was responsible as Minister of Health in the federal government.
Nevertheless, Lauterbach's balance sheet was positive overall almost three years after the beginning of the pandemic.
"We got through it well." Thanks to the cautious approach, mortality in Germany was lower than in other countries, despite the old population.
So far, around 180,000 people in Germany have died as a result of a corona infection.
"It's not a bad number, but we would have done even better if it hadn't been for this constant politicization of policies," he said.
Insufficient recommendations from experts
At the end of January, Lauterbach had already declared the longer closure of schools and daycare centers in the corona pandemic to be unnecessary.
"Keeping it closed for so long" was in retrospect "a point of criticism" about the measures.
At the same time, Lauterbach pointed out that this corresponded to the recommendations of experts at the time: "So the level of knowledge was simply not good enough."
In Germany, many companies were "relatively spared" and could have continued to work normally, said Lauterbach.
At the same time, "the children and the schools got into it very hard".
In retrospect, the assumption that there were many infections in schools and daycare centers "did not prove to be correct in this form," said the Minister of Health, who was not in office at the time the schools were closed.
Other countries would have done this "somewhat differently" and set "different priorities".
mrc/dpa
