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Even after a year of pandemic, neither the Austrian government nor the EU can provide citizens with reliable data. The latest charade about the FFP2 mask requirement illustrates the political issues that follow.
In his ingenious essay “Le goût du vrai”, the French physicist Étienne Klein recorded an important insight that is causing us considerable difficulties in the intellectual and political management of the pandemic: “The sciences advance through the collective organization of scientific controversies ”. : he is not a scientist, he is not an expert, nobody is infallible. But through open discussion and critical analysis, structured within the framework of the method, they bring us closer to the truth.
This attitude should also guide politicians in their dealings with Covid-19. Keyword: evidence-based decision making. Unfortunately, even shortly before the first anniversary of the pandemic, it is still not possible to strengthen the trust and personal responsibility of citizens through reliable, transparent and readily available data on the epidemic and its control. Today, neither in Austria nor in the European Union do we know exactly how many infected people there are, because each country proves how it makes sense. We also have no idea how many people have already been vaccinated, because local, regional and national authorities cannot or do not want to count the doses of vaccine administered. That’s why the new Covid-19 vaccine tracker from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is sadly useless at the moment. Because several countries report outdated, incorrect data or, like Austria, to the ECDC headquarters in Stockholm.
This is fatal, because the willingness of citizens to accept increasingly strict restrictions on their freedoms is diminishing. How do our rulers intend to ensure that we not only grudgingly accept the letters of epidemiological ordinances and laws, but also abide by their spirit? So, do we behave in such a way that we do not infect ourselves or endanger our fellow men as much as possible? If the facts are not even on the table, if you have to run after each statistic individually to find them only old and outdated, the fight for truth is hard to win.
And then mistrust, a network of conspiracy, madness sprouts. Austria’s latest sham about the FFP2 mask requirement, of which, with the exception of Bavaria, the rest of Europe thinks little of, illustrates this. The government’s careless handling of facts and evidence obviously makes it impossible for many contemporaries to discuss the matter with a calm head. Reading the debates under the “Presse” report shows: You are in favor of the mask or against it. The nuances are leveled. You can’t make a state like that. And therefore, fighting this terrible disease will take longer than it would.
