Politicians have to make clear rules and decisions about pandemics right now.
(Photo: imago images / Marc John)
Whoever orders a tour will also get it from him, said the future Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But where is it, decisive action? Bundeswehr machines have been flying patients through the republic for days. Hundreds more new Covid patients will end up in intensive care units in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the new Omikron variant is spreading.
More need is hardly possible. For months now, instead of acting, politics has been caught in an endless loop of expressions of will. “We want to vaccinate more,” they say. “We want to restrict the contacts more. We want to break the fourth wave. ”
Wanting – instead of becoming, a rhetorical trick that dresses inaction in appeals that sound like actionist. On Tuesday, Scholz, Executive Chancellor Angela Merkel and 16 ministers held a conference. But the most important decision-makers in the republic did not make any decisions.
There was only the will to sit down again on Thursday and possibly decide what could have been decided long ago. Nationwide 2G, for example, so that unvaccinated people no longer have access to facilities, restaurants and events.
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There is no need for a federal-state summit for this, the rules already allow it. Or finally a plan to implement the job-related or even general compulsory vaccination. No federal-state summit can force that either, but must implement the traffic light parties in parliament instead of arguing endlessly about it.
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There was not even a public declaration by those involved, and the need for explanation is almost infinite. Why does Scholz want to tighten the Infection Protection Act again after the traffic light only defused it in mid-November after endless debates? Why did Scholz suddenly speak out in favor of compulsory vaccination in the digital back room? He had always refused her so far.
The vaccination status should expire after six months in the future. This suggestion was also completely unexpected. Scholz wants vaccination compulsory, Scholz wants vaccination status to expire. Wanting instead of doing – the old pattern.
The anger in the population is growing – and rightly so. Most of them have done everything they can to the end – and of course they expect the same from politics. The majority have been vaccinated a second time and will be vaccinated a third time.
Those who want the booster can be happy if they don’t have to stand in line for hours at a vaccination center in the rain and cold or have to phone dozens of general practitioners. For this chaos there are all sorts of explanations and excuses from the general practitioners, states and the Federal Ministry of Health, who blame each other.
Rescue from disaster: politicians cannot rely on acting quickly in a pandemic.
(Photo: Frank Hoppmann)
What sticks with the citizen, however, is the impression of a completely unsuccessful crisis policy. And how should the operators of bars, restaurants, clubs, amusement rides and possibly also shops feel when they are threatened with a lockdown again? It was always said that there would no longer be a lockdown.
Anyone who still imagines that all of this could have been avoided must finally despair. Politicians should have pushed the booster campaign in the summer. She could have driven up the vaccination quota through a decided 2G rule, which is also monitored.
But it was an election campaign.
Incidentally, all of this is actually tyranny – and it is not just a tyranny of the unvaccinated, as World Medical Association boss Frank Ulrich Montgomery once said, but a tyranny of the inactive.
More: The federal and state governments are discussing stricter corona measures