According to virologist Christian Drosten, corona disease can now be compared to normal flu. This is because “the population is largely vaccinated and most people have been infected several times,” Drosten told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” (Weekend). At the beginning of the pandemic, such a comparison, which came from individual voices, was a clear misjudgment. The Berlin professor advocated coming to terms with the pandemic.
The scientist admitted that he would never have thought that effective vaccines would be available after just one year. “That was great and saved us a lot.” But that doesn’t mean that Corona didn’t pose any danger. This reinterpretation that is currently underway is dishonest. If you look at other large European industrialized countries, Germany got through the pandemic well from a medical perspective. “In the first wave it was even excellent – and that in a global comparison. However, that also made us careless before the second wave.” But even here, Germany was in the middle in terms of death rates.
What was reflected in the statistics was that there was a problem convincing people about the vaccination in autumn 2021, said Drosten. “The many serious cases should no longer have happened.” Before the winter wave of 2020, politicians were no longer willing to react because there was the impression that science was not in agreement.
In reality, this was only due to a few voices who took up a lot of public space with their counter-theses, says the virologist. This made politicians very uncertain about their ability to act. The partial lockdown cost a lot of strength, nerves and money, but was difficult to slow down the incidence: “We had 60,000 deaths this winter alone – and that just a few weeks before the vaccination campaign began.”
It was clear to him that the best way to help people was to explain the situation, with all the background information and honest forecasts, said Drosten. However, to this day he still finds it dishonest that some people used the crisis to personally benefit from it. The message that had to be conveyed back then was not popular: “When politicians or even doctors start to water down the facts in order to please people, the honest information brokers become the target.” This not only affects him, but also him many of his colleagues angry.
