The RKI protocols and a response from the Ministry of Health show that the “Caution Team” instrumentalized science to enforce its political will. In doing so, it caused great damage.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (left) and the then President of the Robert Koch Institute, Lothar Wieler, often appeared together.
Chris Emil Janssen / Imago
Alexander Kissler is an editor at NZZ Germany.
Angelina Vernetti
You are reading an excerpt from the weekday newsletter “The Other View”, today by Alexander Kissler, editor of NZZ Germany. Subscribe to the newsletter for free. Not living in Germany? Benefit here.
The corona pandemic in Germany has been overcome virologically, but not politically or psychologically. It continues to have an impact on the minds and bodies of those who reluctantly bowed to pressure from the executive – or remained stubborn and were insulted as “vaccine refusers”.
New revelations are grist to their mill. The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) deliberately kept the risk assessment at a very high level at the beginning of 2022 and thus interfered with the supposedly independent Robert Koch Institute (RKI). This confirms a terrible suspicion: the “Caution Team” instrumentalized science to enforce its political will.
The pandemic was an exceptional situation in terms of communication. The magnitude of the common challenge had to be conveyed to a population of medical laypeople. That is why the hour of previously largely unknown virologists, sociologists and modellers struck. When a vaccine was available, the widely shared interest was in achieving the highest possible vaccination rate: “Every dose must go into one arm,” demanded the then chair of the German Ethics Council, Alena Buyx.
Stigmatization without reason
Suddenly there was a threat of a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. Health ministers Jens Spahn and Karl Lauterbach adopted the false slogan. However, vaccination was only for self-protection, not for the protection of others. Unvaccinated people were not particularly responsible for the epidemic, and vaccinated people could also pass on the virus. There was no reason to stigmatize unvaccinated people and exclude them from large parts of public life with the 2G rule.
At the beginning of March 2022, 75 percent of the German population had been vaccinated at least twice. The health system was not overloaded. The Robert Koch Institute’s protocols, which were made public by a whistleblower and a freelance journalist, show that Lauterbach’s Ministry of Health nevertheless rejected a technically necessary “reduction of the risk from very high to high” “for strategic reasons”. Later, “with a view to the BMG,” the risk was downgraded “initially to high and not moderate.”
In response to a request from a CSU member of the Bundestag, the ministry has now announced that at the end of February 2022, the BMG decided “together with the RKI” to “maintain the risk assessment for the health of the population”. This statement and the minutes allow only one conclusion: the institute bowed to Lauterbach against its better judgment.
From a purely formal point of view, there is nothing to complain about. The Robert Koch Institute is a federal institute attached to the Ministry of Health. When Karl Lauterbach sat next to RKI President Lothar Wieler to explain the Corona situation, he was both boss and subordinate.
However, the minister gave the impression that it was not his own authority speaking, but pure, honest science. Large parts of the media followed and became amplifiers of Lauterbach’s panic attacks. In fact, the institute presented what the minister wanted to hear. When Wieler indulged in dire scenarios, he was his master’s ventriloquist. Before Christmas 2021, Wieler said: “We really must not give those who do not get vaccinated the chance to avoid vaccination, for example by getting tested.”
Lingering desire for power
The aversion to freedom of the “Team Caution” around Lauterbach, Wieler, the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder and his Baden-Württemberg counterpart Winfried Kretschmann had dystopian features. No insult was rude enough to avoid defaming vaccine sceptics as lacking in solidarity. There was talk of “harsh interventions in civil liberties” (Kretschmann) and compulsory vaccinations for children “right in the classroom” (Söder).
During the Corona pandemic, a state that was otherwise perceived as weak became intoxicated with itself. Freedom was transformed from a citizen’s right of defense into a gift of grace for obedient subjects. The epidemic mistrust that the state is facing in many areas today was born in the pandemic. As long as this is not dealt with either parliamentary or legal and there are no personnel consequences, an entire society will continue to suffer from the lust for power of Lauterbach & Co.
If the call to follow science is heard again in the future, many people could turn away. This is the damage that leading politicians have caused.
