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A first class in Rostock goes to their classroom: Largest gathering of unvaccinated people in closed rooms
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
On September 1, 2021, we are in year two of the global pandemic that began in Europe 20 months earlier in January 2020.
Against this background, a little guessing game can be held in good spirits: How many euros in federal funding have already gone into mobile air filter systems in kindergartens and schools?
So to the places where the largest concentrations of unvaccinated people are in closed rooms after the summer vacation?
The correct answer should be: zero euros.
Unless there has been a lightning bolt of money in the last few days that we don't yet know about.
But that is rather unlikely - which brings us to the two reasons for this astonishing omission.
One of them is concrete, the other makes you race with anger.
The specific is that such applications can only be made since August 27, 2021.
Was not possible before because - depending on who you ask - either the federal government or the federal states blocked, some signature was missing and an administrative regulation of the federal government had to be changed.
If you take the experience from the November aid for companies as a model, then the payout should begin around late summer 2031.
The other furious reason for the failure towards the youngest is the fundamental disdain with which this country treats its children. That they dared to propose ventilation as the most important corona measure for children for almost a year and a half. Instead of getting the one and a half billion euros for air filters in classrooms, when plans were also made for theaters, museums and parliament buildings in late summer 2020.
The disregard was of course already there before Corona, the German disregard for children can be attached to a shameful value, along with many other data. When Angela Merkel became Chancellor in 2005, 19.5 percent of children in Germany were at risk of poverty. In 2020 this value was 21.3 percent, and there is hardly a better way to express the fact that children are simply politically negligible. To avoid interpretation games - the numbers come from the Bertelsmann Foundation, which is not necessarily known as the spearhead of socialism. This development is all the more shameful as the economic development in Germany over the past ten years has been spectacularly good. And that there were a number of reforms and packages of measures that should at least have reduced child poverty. Not happened, obviously.But of course politics is not always solely responsible for everything everywhere.
The aging of society has shifted interests. The devil demography strikes mercilessly, in the upcoming federal election there will be three times as many voters over 60 as voters under 30 years of age. Pensioners are politically more important than children and their parents combined. Unfortunately, parents traditionally allow themselves to be fobbed off with lip service over and over again, saying that children are very important. And soon there would definitely be a great, inexpensive daycare place.
And so 15 years of screwed up digital lessons could happen in the Merkel era. For example, the federal and state governments could appear unprepared for the second pandemic summer vacation in a row and still be in good part. So it happens that stationary air filters have been subsidized in official buildings since October 2020, but only since June 2021 in schools and daycare centers. And mobile air filters only for a few minutes. Somehow, however, children do not seem to enjoy a particularly high priority not only in politics, but also with the voters. Because the only reason why the CDU is not at 40 percent is that Angela Merkel will not run again.
Probably the bitterest realization in the context of the German disregard for children in times of Corona arises when you put together different puzzle pieces that fit together: There is no vaccine for under 12-year-olds, the schools should be kept open, the quarantine rules for Corona-affected schools have been reduced to a minimum, according to qualified estimates no more than 30 percent of the classrooms are equipped with air filters - and the incidence as the most important measure has just been replaced by the hospitalization rate. Although children are infected about as quickly as adults, they have to go to hospital much less often. This means that even if an inconceivable number of children should become infected, measures do not necessarily have to be taken.Smells like child contamination through the back door.
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Sascha Lobo
Reality shock: ten lessons from the present
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You have to make a lot of effort not to see the actual strategy of the federal government in this.
The virologist Martin Stürmer warns of this: "We are running out of an infection in under 12-year-olds because in many countries politics will or has already given up on the incidence without providing adequate alternatives for the under 12-year-olds." .
In fact, according to previous knowledge, Corona is a significantly less threatening pandemic for very young people than for older people. But it is not at all harmless, also because more and more long-term effects are becoming known, even with mild courses. Child infection must not take the place of a real strategy, if only because Delta should not have been the last word of the virus. And the difference between the wild type and the delta variant is extremely relevant, especially for children. Infection of children would also mean that eleven million small virus spreaders run through Germany and still supply every corner with Corona. So also those who have been able to protect themselves to some extent, although they cannot be vaccinated for health reasons.
The President of the German Teachers' Association extrapolates the figures from the USA in order to arrive at an assessment of the difficult courses and hospital admissions for schoolchildren: “If you transfer that to the number of schoolchildren in Germany, about eleven million, then that could be up to 200,000 pupils in the worst case. «Even if things should go better, as in Great Britain, the bitter feeling remains that children had to do without everything for a year and a half. Conversely, however, that adults could neither get air filters for schools in good time nor were they vaccinated in sufficient numbers to protect the children who could not be vaccinated.
The one big question, weighing several tons, remains, even before Corona, but with Corona with a very special urgency. Why is it that so much is expected of children? It can be answered with a simple but impressive comparison. There are 14.5 million parents of minor children in Germany, but 21 million ADAC members. And that's exactly how it feels.