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Long-term goal of Christmas: In the end, the citizens decide for themselves whether it will be carefree under the Christmas tree
Photo: Philipp von Ditfurth / dpa
The Germans are facing a difficult November.
Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Ministers unanimously decided on Wednesday to largely shut down public life.
The measures apply from November 2nd to the end of the month - and are to be enforced with controls and sanctions.
The corona virus is currently spreading exponentially in almost all regions of Germany.
The massive restrictions are justified by wanting to reduce the number of new infections to below 50 new infections and to avoid an acute "health emergency" in Germany, as stated in the decision paper (read here how the shutdown negotiations took place).
The consequences for the economy, society and each individual are sometimes severe.
If it turns out in a few weeks that the new strategy has been successful, there is at least an attractive reward for many: the chance for a reasonably normal Christmas party.
But how do experts from medicine and science rate the results?
Are the new measures suitable for actually achieving this goal?
In essence, the Federal Chancellor and the country chiefs demand that the Germans reduce all contact with people who are not part of their own household to an "absolutely necessary minimum".
In detail this means:
Only members of two households and a maximum of ten people are allowed to meet in public space.
And no matter whether on a square in the city or in the party room at home - groups of people partying are "unacceptable".
Private trips, family visits and larger day trips should be avoided.
Hotels and guest houses are not allowed to accommodate tourists, business trips are allowed.
Theaters, operas, concert halls, cinemas, trade fairs, arcades, casinos, brothels, swimming pools, saunas, thermal baths and fitness studios remain closed.
The residents are still allowed to walk, jog, ride a bike or do some other individual sport, alone, with people from their own household or at most with one other person
Football and other amateur sport games are prohibited.
In the professional area, games can take place, but only without spectators.
Bars, clubs, discos, pubs and restaurants, with the exception of canteens, will be closed.
However, restaurants are allowed to offer food for consumption at home.
Cosmetic studios, massage practices, tattoo studios and similar businesses will be closed.
Physiotherapy and other medically necessary therapies, on the other hand, are permitted, as is the appointment in the hairdressing salon.
Shops remain open, but there must be no queues.
And there shouldn't be more than one customer per ten square meters of sales area.
Schools and kindergartens remain open.
Sandra Ciesek, Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the Frankfurt University Hospital, in an interview with SPIEGEL, draws an overall positive conclusion from the agreements made on Wednesday.
"I think it makes sense to set the priorities," said the expert.
"It is probably clear to most that something needs to be done quickly with the worrying rise in the number of cases across Europe. I am pleased that when it comes to restrictions, it is not the children and the family who are the most suffering, as was the case with the first lockdown So daycare centers stay open. "
The time factor
However, she would have liked the measures to have come into effect from the weekend, says Ciesek.
"Because in addition to the focus of the measures, the timing also plays a very important role".
Now every day counts.
"In principle, the infection process should have been narrowed down weeks ago. Unfortunately, that did not succeed. Now the pressure to act is so great that a strong change in behavior and less contact are inevitable," says the virologist Melanie Brinkmann from the Technical University of Braunschweig MIRROR.
The measures are also backed by large German research organizations.
The measures are "probably unavoidable" at the moment, said Otmar Wiestler, President of the Helmholtz Association on Deutschlandfunk.
On Tuesday, the Helmholtz Association with the German Research Foundation of the Fraunhofer Society, the Leibniz Association, the Max Planck Society and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina called for all contacts that could potentially lead to an infection, systematically reduce.
However, researchers do not yet know which measures have how big an effect.
"Every non-contact has an effect, regardless of whether people don't meet at school, not at university, not in the office or not in a restaurant," explained Viola Priesemann from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen recently in a discussion with journalists.
It will take some time to see how well the measures work.
Because it takes several days for symptoms to appear after an infection, the numbers initially increase at the beginning of a shutdown.
"It takes one to three weeks for the consequences of individual measures to show up in the statistics," explained Priesemann.
Doctors fundamentally criticize the decisions
However, some experts think that the politicians could have justified the decision much better.
"In my opinion, it is extremely important that we improve communication with the population even further," says the intensive care doctor Christian Karagiannidis from the Cologne-Mehrheim hospital to SPIEGEL.
"I strongly advocate a corona traffic light that shows the population every day what is going on in intensive care beds in Germany, the new infection rates, the dynamics of the disease and the overall burden on hospitals. This is the very essential part of communication with the population in order to make it clear how important the measures are. "
Doctors, however, also criticize the new restrictions in principle: "The decision is a partial lockdown and will unfortunately not solve the problem," said Andreas Gassen, physician and chairman of the board of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, to SPIEGEL.
He thinks it is wrong to close all restaurants in Germany just because guests and restaurateurs in certain Berlin districts have disregarded the distance rules.
Gassen says: "You hit the sack and you mean the donkey."
It is also wrong to give the population controls and penalties, says Gassen and criticizes the SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach, who had called for controls in private rooms.
Gassen says: "Mr. Lauterbach with the police will not solve the problem."
"We rely on commandments instead of prohibitions, on personal responsibility instead of paternalism. Prohibitions or paternalism have a short half-life and do not correspond to our understanding of a free democratic basic order" - Gassen shared that with the Bonn virologist Hendrik Streeck and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit from Bernhard -Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg already declared on Wednesday in a statement that is supported by almost 60 medical associations or societies (read an analysis of the demands here).
Federal Chancellor Merkel and the Prime Ministers are trying to sweeten their decision by already promising easing: "Families and friends should be able to meet at Christmas time even under Corona conditions."
But in the end, the citizens themselves decide whether it will be carefree under the Christmas tree. "Everyone should be aware that the success of the virus in spreading depends above all on how we behave," says Sandra Ciesek.
And further: "Anyone can help to avoid giving the virus a chance. If we reduce our contacts to the bare minimum, keep our distance, wear mouth and nose protection, observe general hygiene rules, the virus has 'from above' even without prescriptions no chance to spread. "
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