From swan to ugly duckling, from champion of efficiency in the fight against the pandemic in the first wave, to the country of the lockdown marathon and the vaccine disaster in the second. The parable of Germany is also beginning to have violent political reflections, now that the electoral campaign for the September elections has begun.
Today the rift even crosses the government: the attack on Angela Merkel (CDU) comes from her deputy, Olaf Scholz (Spd): “This summer we will be sitting in our Biergärten (the typical beer gardens, ed) and the next football season will be quite normal, ”he provocatively said from the columns of the most popular tabloid, Bild. Completely contradicting the line of the chancellor, who continues to keep the coffin straight on the incidence of 35 infected per 100 thousand inhabitants (she also reiterated this last week, after the European Council). And he repeats that it is necessary to return to normal very slowly, starting with private meetings.
Wednesday showdown Merkel-governors
A tumultuous new government-land meeting is scheduled for Wednesday to decide what to do after March 7, and already a revolt of many regional prime ministers is announced, exhausted by months of lowered shutters. In Germany, the vast majority of shops have been closed since mid-December; restaurants and bars from November. And many think like Heinrich Deichmann, president of the colossus of the same name of shoe stores, who asks to reopen immediately, as early as March 8: “We are in a dramatic situation – he told the Handelsblatt – which risks making 50 thousand shops fail. burn 250,000 jobs ”he warned. “The situation is unsustainable”. Today the hairdressers reopen, meanwhile, and many have their diaries full of appointments for the next few weeks.
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Scholz reported that he fully supports the revolt of the governors of the SPD, who are asking to raise the bar beyond which the restrictions to 70 infected per 100 thousand inhabitants are softened. Currently Germany is at 63.8%, but for experts the sustainability of the health system is guaranteed with the level indicated by Merkel: 35. The key to Scholz’s reasoning for a quick return to normal are the swabs: “We can do many more tests (…) and we should use them to start reopening ”. A reasoning that has been going on for weeks now, supported by the major sector associations, which are asking for solutions for reopening also linked to the promise of the Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, who announced free tampons for all from this month. When exactly is not yet clear, but the chancellor has also promised that “from March” they will be free. Meanwhile, the German drug agency also gave the go-ahead for do-it-yourself tampons at the end of February.
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The vaccine disaster
The governors are also on the fence about another problem that is paralyzing Germany: the vaccine disaster. According to the latest data from the Koch Institute, of more than 8.4 million doses available across the country, only 5.9 million have been administered. Two and a half million doses are unused. And the problem concerns AstraZeneca in particular: a spokesman for the Ministry of Health confirmed last Wednesday that just 15% of the vaccine was inoculated in Germany: 240 thousand doses out of 1.45 million.
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The prejudice towards a drug considered less effective than its competitors resists, but there are also bureaucratic problems. And productive: Konstantin Matentzoglu, head of Celonic, said on TV that “we can’t have the machinery and there are bottlenecks in the materials to produce vaccines. Above all: we struggle to obtain a guarantee on deliveries from pharmaceutical companies ”.
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The governors of four important lands, Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttenberg, Hesse and Saxony, have already asked for vaccinations to be carried out in the next categories or even distributed to volunteers in the face of the stocks. “Rather than hoarding it, let anyone who wants to get vaccinated can do it,” Bavarian governor Markus Söder suggested. “We have to accelerate,” he added in an interview with Bild am Sonntag. On the same wavelength his colleague from Baden-Wuerttenberg, Winfried Kretschmann: “We cannot afford not to give the vaccine because a part of the population refuses it,” he told Welt am Sonntag.
AstraZeneca also for the elderly?
Some, such as the Head of Health of the SPD, Karl Lauterbach, go even further and propose that AstraZeneca should also be administered to the over-65s for whom it is so far not recommended due to the minor tests carried out among the elderly by the Anglo-Swedish company. An idea also shared by the president of the Vaccines Commission (Stiko), Thomas Mertens, who announced that he will propose it to the government: “It can be done and we will do it,” he said.
But the SPD politician Karl Lauterbach is also in favor of the “English solution”, imitated by many European countries such as Sweden, Denmark or Ireland and also considered with interest by Mario Draghi: administer everything, vaccinate immediately without worrying about the recall, extending the time for the second dose.
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