Blocking: this curve reveals the central omission

Am Monday 1050 dead, Tuesday 1100, Wednesday 910. Week after week after week. Monday through Sunday, these are roughly the numbers for the lockdown. But each new morning, Cologne medical professor Matthias Schrappe scoffed, the Berlin crisis cabinet starts the day with new hope that its closure would have decimated the numbers overnight. Week after week.

With new numbers, statistics and mathematical analysis, Schrappe and his team of eight experts have exposed the failure of the lockdown policy. The investigation brought to light surprising news. The most important of them concerns the hustle and bustle of cemeteries: for those who have to live with the highest risk of death from infection, the hard lock has brought practically nothing.

For a first orientation, the scientists draw attention to three numbers: 85 percent of Covid deaths are older than 69 years, around 850,000 older people live in German care centers. The authors consider decisive whether they survive the pandemic and how much the virus spreads in hospitals. They have been urging since spring to move “vulnerable groups” to the center of the fight against the pandemic.

Scientists see how much federal and state governments have failed on the pandemic curve from early November to the days leading up to Christmas. A clear flattening of the number of infections can be observed in all age groups. But not in the highest age group over 85. Here, the numbers are running wild at a steep peak, accompanied by a sharp rise in the death rate, which reached a record high of 88 percent in calendar week 51. While at the other extreme it is between 0.04 and 0.8 percent for those under 50 years of age.

“It’s a paradox,” says Matthias Schrappe. “Here, a lockdown policy associated with high social costs is being implemented without considering other options or even thinking about a change in strategy.” Schrappe believes that a low incidence could protect the elderly as “too myopic. These people cannot benefit from the lockdown, after all, they are already locked up anyway. You shouldn’t advise an 80-year-old man not to move 15 kilometers from his home. “

At the beginning of this year 2021, the balance of the crown policy of the federal and state governments is “depressing”, a long-term strategy is not perceived. The goal of the new blockade, an incidence of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days, is unattainable. Instead, the wrong impression is being given right now: vaccines changed everything, one could lean back on the motto “the syringe will fix it.”

The task force around Schrappe, a former vice chairman of the Federal Government Advisory Council, has been brutally exposing the policy of the German crown since the start of the pandemic. With protection concepts for risk groups and the central requirement: elderly and nursing homes, but also elderly people who live alone, not to be sealed, but accompanied by more tests, specially trained personnel and direct contact through the pandemic. The nine authors include former members of the Federal Government Health Advisory Council, medical professors, and health insurance experts.

Deactivation at the end of February

With vaccinations now starting in homes for the elderly and for the elderly, the authors hope that the situation there will calm down. “In late February and early March we will have to deal with a significantly lower death rate,” says Schrappe. But the number of infections is expected to remain high. “Is the policy then self-critical and self-reflective enough that, despite the ongoing dynamic infection process, it says: ‘We have solved the main problem, so we can relax the measures’?”

The authors would like more information and further studies regarding vaccines. “We see a lack of preparation for vaccination among medical staff, you should talk to these people,” says co-author Gerd Glaeske. Glaeske is an expert on pharmaceuticals and holds a professorship in public health at the University of Bremen. “Many doctors and nurses ask questions about side effects and effectiveness and perhaps that is why they do not want to belong to the first group of vaccinated. It is not enough for the Robert Koch Institute to point out that ‘you can read that’ “. Glaeske wants” people to be able to make a conscious and informed decision for or against vaccination. And we are still a long way from making these informed decisions. ” says Glaeske.

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Above all, more information is needed on the magnitude of undesirable side effects. “What you must make clear: it is a protection for me if I get vaccinated. But it is not known exactly if it will also protect others, ”says Glaeske.

It is also important to monitor the success of the vaccination. Side effects would have to be documented. The German Society for Epidemiology has made a good suggestion for this, says Glaeske: People at vaccination centers should be asked to read their health insurance card so that after the two syringes they can be analyzed for any side effects that require treatment based on diagnostic data from health insurance companies: How often do vaccinated people have to go to hospital? When and why to the doctor? But the RKI and the Federal Ministry of Health have given the answer: the installation of the reading devices takes too long.

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The authors also take a critical look at intensive care units. There they see 6000 beds less than expected. The number of Covid patients in intensive care units has increased significantly. At the same time, “an absolute drop in total intensive capacity” can be observed, “which cannot be explained with the available data”.

They suspect that the reason for this is the lack of staff and the flat fee that the federal government had paid to hospitals during the first wave as compensation for intensive care beds. “There was no comprehensive national effort to hire enough nurses and manage intensive care capabilities, so triage of hospital patients is now being considered,” criticized Schrappe’s team.

It is the seventh article published by the group. They hope to find an “optimistic and viable path through the pandemic.” Simultaneously with the course of the pandemic, the authors also examined the inability of the designers of the enclosure to move. “Groupthink” has seeped in here, says justices co-author Holger Pfaff, professor of medical sociology at the University of Cologne. What it is and how it works, he explains with a historical case from the textbook: “The most famous example of groupthink comes from 1961, it was the United States attack on Cuba, with the Bay of Pigs invasion. This failure was due to groupthink, excessive groupthink, ”says Pfaff. “In 1961 the multi-member Kennedy administration shut down, all the information that didn’t fit into the picture was vanished, denied, denied, rejected. The advisory staff, struggling to reach an excessive agreement, were unable to recognize the real situation, weigh the alternatives, and correct themselves. In this situation, wrong decisions can be made ”.

This way of thinking can be observed in terms of textbooks in Germany.