Again this week, many Germans will spend their time in the Corona test center or at home with test cassettes (“Where is the line?”). Many need proof of identity for work, the gym, or the restaurant. But what all these test products really do is even more unexplored than the actual number of people infected with corona.
Of the approximately 600 rapid antigen tests on the German market, many have so far “not been tested by independent bodies or scientists”, warns Oliver Keppler, virologist at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Basically there are big qualitative differences, the informative value of the self and rapid tests is “very limited”. Consumer advocates demand a transparent review.
Because after so many months of pandemic this gives a pathetic picture, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach immediately announced a positive list for rapid tests that Omikron can detect well. The Paul Ehrlich Institute takes on the testing of the tests that were previously approved according to information from mostly Chinese manufacturers. According to the scheme: if you don’t know anything, you have to believe everything.
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(Photo: AP)
In political life, ambitious mouthworkers are given nothing like booming quotes or unrealistic goals. Olaf Scholz, the head of government floating like a phoenix from the ashes of the SPD into the Federal Chancellery, is affected twice by this. On the one hand, there is his motto: “Whoever orders leadership will also get it”. On the other hand, there is his promise that vaccination will be compulsory at the beginning of March at the latest. The facts point to early summer, if that.
Now the Bundestag is first looking for a course in an orientation debate at the end of January, which is of particular concern to the smallest ruling party, the FDP. Then only one week of meetings is scheduled in the carnival month of February, and finally the Federal Council does not meet again until April.
“This is not an easy decision, it means a deep intervention,” said Greens parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann, dampening expectations of a quick vaccination requirement. Somehow you suddenly remember that the pragmatist Scholz once compared the organization of a G7 summit with that of a Hamburg port birthday.
The Left Party can be relied on for a few things. For example, that – like yesterday – she recalls the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919. And then, of course, that it puts up its own candidate for each election of a Federal President. This time, this has the democratic advantage that Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has already been positively examined by Ampel and Union for the second term of office, now has an opposing candidate – the Mainz social medicine specialist Gerhard Trabert, 65.
The man has no chance, but wants to use it “to point out the poverty and social injustice in this country and to appear as an advocate for people who are not heard enough”. He said that to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Trabert also noted that Social Democrat Steinmeier could have reported more often on the social issue.
(Photo: Unsplash, AP)
Every summit includes verbal blows in advance. That is also the case at the Ukraine summit of the USA and Russia, which starts today in Geneva. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Vladimir Putin’s country to de-escalate the crisis in eastern Ukraine ahead of the important negotiations. It is difficult to make progress “in an atmosphere of escalation with a pistol at the head of Ukraine”. Blinken alludes to the soldiers of 100,000 Russians posted on the Ukraine border.
“Negotiating with the Russian aggressor: What does Putin want?” is the title of an analysis by our expert Mathias Brüggmann.
When we are currently talking about medicine, it is often about Corona. But cancer therapies will soon be the focus – and new, individualized applications of mRNA technology, which has proven itself in mass vaccination against Covid-19. The high-flyer Biontech from Mainz is hoping for this – and is also challenging the established corporations here. For example Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), the world market leader in the rapidly growing oncology business.
In the Handelsblatt cover complex, CEO Giovanni Caforio announced that he would be promoting the fight against cancer with many new developments and focusing more on cell therapy, especially in the treatment of advanced cancer. The group has strengthened itself through the purchase of the US rival Celgene and through an alliance with the Tübingen biotech company Immatics, but has to fear for sales: the patents for the blood cancer drug Revlimid and three other anti-cancer agents are expiring.
And then there is Lim Kok Thai, 70, casino and cruise billionaire from Malaysia, who gambled for a few million with German politics. It’s about the battered MV shipyards in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the world’s largest cruise ship “Global I” is currently being built. In order to get 1900 jobs, the federal government wants – as a kind of capitalist repair company – to put 600 million euros into the shipyard, but only if the Thais Genting group contributes 60 million. However, he only wants to pay 44 million euros, according to the “Ostsee-Zeitung”.
Thais governors are now insulting the government strategists from Berlin: “Dropping the shipyards now would be the greatest economic mistake the federal government could make.” IG Metall, on the other hand, calls for the shipyard in Stralsund to be sold quickly. The legendary cabaret artist Wolfgang Neuss would have said here: “Rivets are important if we want to get the ship clear again.”
I wish you a good navigation through the week.
I warmly greet you
Her
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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