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“Four difficult weeks” await us. It is written in the stars how “sustainable” the renewed restrictions on public life will be in the fight against the virus. If you ask six different people about this, you may hear twelve different evaluations. The vehemence or reliability of the answer depends on the character of the respondents, but more on their experience.
Viola Priesemann conducts research at the Max Planck Institute on all kinds of propagation processes, especially diseases, and is relieved and “impressed with how well politics now understands what exponential growth is.” Current measures would come late, but possibly not too late, to reduce the incidence of infections to a traceable level again.
Stefan Willich, on the other hand, views restriction events with some skepticism. The Charité epidemiologist believes that it is “worthy of criticism” that the measures are not “regionally adjusted” and, therefore, should have a similar effect in a metropolis than in the province. Nor does it make sense to close cultural spaces or prohibit outdoor sports.
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, who was initially connected from Nuremberg, asks for understanding: “That makes some logic,” he says about the new regulations, because “75 percent” do not know where the infection is occurring. Therefore, a “reduction of contacts by three quarters” makes sense for him: “We are also very sorry that we have to take action.” It is the “only realistic and ethically justifiable alternative.” Well, he doesn’t say that.
For the moment, kindergartens and schools are not affected, and the economy also goes unpunished: the bill, as they say, is paid by the gastronomy, the hotel and the culture. Priesemann believes that is correct. In larger gatherings or events, tracing the chains of infection in the event of an outbreak would no longer be possible or would be “a Herculean task.”
Representing gastronomy, the hospitality industry and culture, jazz trumpeter Till Brönner speaks on behalf of one and a half million employees in an already precarious industry. He himself “certainly will make it through somehow,” most probably not. Since March he has only given three shows, basically a “total lockdown” has been applied to the entire event industry since February.
In fact, politics seems to understand exponential growth better than the world of a musician, actor, dancer, or poet. Brönner suspects “that our own government does not understand our cultural DNA.” For example, a cultural worker “would have no chance to claim his operating costs” because he has absolutely no operating costs: “The industry is broken.”
Chancery Minister Helge Braun, CDU, also has “pity” for those involved in culture. But “somewhere we have to do it”, and rather in the “leisure sector”. After all, those affected would now receive “75 percent” of critical November sales that they “might otherwise have expected,” calculated on the basis of average revenue from the previous year. Very small drop, damn hot stone.
Willich points out that politicians have opted for work and education, but against leisure. So “free time” is not an appropriate term. Culture, but “significant meaning, healthy meaning” and also demonstrable positive effects on the immune system. In the long term, Willich thinks it is “too optimistic” to assume that there will only be a couple of months before a vaccine is available. An “informed and flexible population” has to get used to a large number of infections.
Priesemann and Braun vehemently disagree. A “stable” infection process, that is, traceable, is no longer available beyond 5000 new infections per day. It makes sense to return to the mild state of summer. “It’s worth it,” Priesemann says, if you don’t want uncontrolled spread. Everything else is like trying to “put out a fire blindly.”
From a legal point of view, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP) has a few more words to say about the Chancellor’s apodictic words that the measures are “adequate, necessary and proportionate”. The Bavarian Constitutional Court judge found that all types of curfew or accommodation bans were often classified as “unnecessary” and “not proportionate”.
You need “clear laws” on the basis of which action can be taken. Laws that could have been started in the summer. He considers it a bad idea to expand the powers of a “statutory legislature”, as Health Minister Jens Spahn would like to do.
What is needed is robust “pandemic legislation”. So the enlightened and flexible population could at least plan for the long term, because: “No one is planning anything at the moment”, and that is “politically inappropriate”.
No one knows if the restrictions will be “sustainable”. We all hope so.
