Some doctors and scientists have spoken out against a broad shutdown of everyday life in order to contain corona and instead advocated more personal responsibility.
"A blanket lockdown regulation is neither expedient nor feasible," said the head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), Andreas Gassen, in a virtual press conference shortly before the federal and state video switch on new corona measures.
You cannot put the whole country "weeks and months in a kind of artificial coma," he said.
In the afternoon, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and the regional heads will discuss a federal resolution that will provide for stricter measures across Germany from the beginning of November.
For a good three weeks, catering establishments and leisure activities could be closed, tourism restricted and stricter contact restrictions issued.
According to the draft resolution, daycare centers and schools should remain open.
The federal government also wants to extend aid for companies and improve the conditions for the economic sectors mainly affected (read here what is in the draft resolution).
With this temporary shutdown, the government wants to interrupt the currently rapidly increasing infection dynamics - also with regard to Christmas.
It is questionable whether the draft resolution from the Chancellery will be adopted one-to-one at the crisis summit on Wednesday.
Individual countries have already announced that they consider complete closings to be wrong, for example in the catering sector.
Commandments instead of prohibitions
As emerged from the press conference of the KBV, in which the well-known virologists Hendrik Streeck and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit also took part, some representatives of the medical profession and science also consider a short-term shutdown to be inappropriate.
In a position paper that was signed by numerous medical and professional associations, they call for a change in the strategy to combat pandemics.
At the same time, it was emphasized that the position paper could no longer flow into the Prime Minister's round.
Targeted containment measures are necessary, said KBV boss Gassen.
It is wrong to "only record apocalyptic threat scenarios with a gloomy expression".
The trick, however, is not to downplay it.
In order to encourage the population to cooperate, one should "rely on commandments and not predominantly on prohibitions".
The doctors named compliance with the AHA + L rules as a requirement.
For this, the population has to cooperate and think along.
The position paper also suggests a nationwide traffic light system, a move away from contact tracking and the specific protection of vulnerable groups.
The press conference did not produce any concrete proposals for action despite multiple inquiries from the journalists.
"The mask has to be sexy"
"These are suggestions for discussion and suggestions, not the ultimate truth," said Hendrik Streeck, director of the Institute for Virology at the University of Bonn.
"It's about not doing any damage, and for many people that is also caused by the lockdown."
The pandemic is not a sprint, but a marathon, the population has to understand that: "We will not be through with everything in two months if we pull ourselves together now," said Streeck.
"Even if there is a vaccine, we will have to deal with the virus for years."
It is therefore important that the population get used to it and change their behavior permanently.
"The mask has to be sexy," he said.
Two points in particular were important to the doctors in the heated debate: Compliance with the AHA + L rules should not be questioned and is a basic rule in fighting pandemics.
Furthermore, one must increasingly direct the focus to the risk groups and come up with concepts on how to better protect them.
More personal responsibility required from risk groups
Gassen suggested that the risk groups themselves should be responsible for their behavior and, for example, limit their contacts accordingly.
Streeck brought the use of FFP2 masks in the private sector and neighborhood help for the elderly into play.
Rapid tests at home are also a way of seeing parents, for example.
The latter proposal is a long way off: there are currently no rapid tests that can be used by laypeople and that are reliable enough to rule out an infection.
Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg said the collateral damage should not exceed the damage caused by the pandemic.
This discussion has not taken place sufficiently in the past and much has been neglected.
The protective rules with distance, hygiene, masks and corona warning app are actually sufficient - but must be implemented consistently.
It is right to reduce risk contacts.
But many would take place at home, less so in hotels.
Better informed about this, including those who do not speak German well.
"That should have been better explained," he said.
It remained unclear what proportion the non-German-speaking population has in the infection rate in Germany.
And to what extent German native speakers are sufficiently informed.
At the press conference it became clear that not only politics, but also science, apparently, is increasingly divided into two camps.
Because just one day in advance, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Research Foundation, the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association, the Leibniz Association and the Max Planck Society published a joint statement suggesting consistent and strict contact restrictions.
It is based on scientific model calculations.
Icon: The mirror
kry / dpa
