At higher levels of politics there is a debate about coming to terms with the Corona period and how politics is dealing with the pandemic. But should this also be done locally and on site – and is there even a need for it?
At least that’s what a group of so-called walkers is now demanding – representatives of a form of protest that developed during the pandemic because public gatherings were not allowed at certain times due to the risk of infection, but walks were officially allowed.
“The corona pandemic can only be dealt with at the federal and state level,” says Tuttlingen’s mayor Michael Beck about this request.
Beck is responding to demands from circles of so-called walkers to call a citizens’ meeting to come to terms with the Corona period in Tuttlingen.
Almost 40 men and women, who have been meeting every Monday for so-called walks since the Corona period, wrote to Beck and asked for this time to be discussed in a public meeting.
Michael Beck, Mayor of Tuttlingen. | Image: Tuttlingen city administration
According to the city’s announcement, Beck doesn’t think much of this specific proposal: “I don’t know what exactly we should work on in Tuttlingen,” said the mayor in his reply letter, “all general orders or other regulations that we issued during this time were immediate derived from state law. The scope for decision-making that we as a municipality had here was extremely small.”
Much easier to judge in retrospect
Beck also admits that many measures were difficult for him at the time – for example, closing children’s playgrounds. School or kindergarten closures also appeared questionable in retrospect.
However, it is always easy to make a judgment based on hindsight: “You are always smarter afterwards.”
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From the perspective at the time, Beck continued, in view of the unmistakable infection situation and an unexplored virus, it was right to act too cautiously rather than too carelessly in cases of doubt.
Beck continued: “I still see it that way, and I don’t envy anyone who had to make the relevant decisions with political responsibility at the federal or state level during this time.”
Processing as an open dialogue
Beck still believes that it makes sense to come to terms with the pandemic: However, not – as demanded by the lateral thinker milieu – as a reckoning, at the end of which the guilty parties are named and punished, but as an open dialogue about how a society can react to such a challenge in the future , and what could be improved.
Beck: “The next pandemic is definitely coming – all biological and ecological developments speak for it.” However, such a reappraisal must take place at the state and federal level.
