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Friday night at Neuruppin. The two boys are already in bed when the police ring the bell. Officers confront parents. His offense: He rented a vacation home in the small town of Brandenburg. This is what the Berlin “Tagesspiegel” reports.
Rural location, no direct neighbors, actually safe. But the family shouldn’t be there right now. Because it comes from a corona risk zone: from nearby Berlin. And for those people there is now a ban on accommodation in Brandenburg.
Police had previously received an anonymous tip that something was wrong at Neuruppin’s vacation home.
According to the police report, the officers finally showed mercy. But the case shows all the absurdity of the Corona debate these days.
The number of infections nearly doubled
While large wedding celebrations and private parties are causing the number of infected people to skyrocket in many places, some state governments are de facto imposing vacation bans on families or individuals. And while many irrational people obviously don’t even care about basic hygiene rules, informants whistle about traveling families.
All this is the result of the last telephone call of the heads of state chancellery and senator of the federal states with the head of the chancellery Helge Braun last Wednesday. Because there they agreed to a ban on accommodation for residents of risky areas in the interior of Germany, unless they can show a negative corona test that does not have more than 48 hours.
The move was in response to the dramatic development of the pandemic.
The number of infections reported daily has risen steadily in recent weeks, and more recently it has nearly doubled to more than 4,700 cases in just a few days.
But it was also an attempt to agree on a common line in the federal states. Previously, the Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate regulations had drawn criticism, where people from risky areas in the interior of Germany should go into two-week quarantine.
A patchwork quilt threatened with barely comprehensible rules.
The solution should be the accommodation ban, which has been in force in Saxony-Anhalt since July. But in the end, the heads of state chancellery could not agree on this either. Berlin, Bremen, Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia do not participate.
The result now reinforces the mess that I really wanted to end.
Critics view the ban as ineffective
Berlin in particular has made headlines in the recent past with high infection rates. But now many cities are above the critical mark of more than 50 infections per 100,000 inhabitants per day: Bremen, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne, Essen and now Munich again.
This is one of the reasons why the accommodation ban is causing violent outrage. Many critics simply consider it ineffective. “A mistake was made that should be clarified,” said SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. There is no study to show that traveling within Germany is a driver of a pandemic.
North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Armin Laschet sees it similarly: “If many places in Germany are risk areas, the question of who can travel from where to where is actually of secondary importance,” said the politician of the CDU.
But there are other doubts.
The accommodation ban may not even be allowed. At least the former president of the Federal Constitutional Court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, takes this point of view. “I think housing bans are constitutionally very problematic,” said the “Bild” newspaper. Their argument: conditions are not provided.
For this reason, the vice president of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Kubicki, also called the regulations “illegal”. The FDP politician stated: “This restriction of fundamental rights will not last for long.”
Decision on Wednesday
Is it possible that the ban will fall again soon, despite the further increase in the number of infections?
In fact, there is some evidence that federal state heads of government will change their minds when they meet Chancellor Angela Merkel again on Wednesday. After all, from the point of view of his supporters, the maneuver would have served a certain purpose.
Many people have already been forced to cancel their fall vacation.
At the same time, there is mounting pressure to lift the controversial restriction as quickly as possible. Also because sometimes it is even considered a threat to the fight against the pandemic.
The SPD politician Lauterbach fears that the population will accept more important measures if rules like these are maintained. Instead, he tells SPIEGEL what he is demanding: “For example, one could consider increasing penalties for refusing to wear a mask. High penalties are also required when private celebrations are held with more than 25 people.” This should be avoided across the country, according to Lauterbach.
According to Lauterbach, other big cities like Hamburg, Munich and Cologne should also consider a curfew like in Berlin. Because: “Spending a lot of time indoors, where people talk a lot and possibly drink alcohol, is the biggest risk,” Lauterbach says.
250 euros fine for those who refuse to wear a mask?
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder is also campaigning for uniform sanctions for violations of Corona’s rules. If he has his way, those who reject the masks should receive 250 euros nationwide, as is already the case in Bavaria.
Lower Saxony Prime Minister Stephan Weil, on the other hand, explained why his country also supports the accommodation ban. After other countries excluded hotel stays, Weil said, “one particular attraction of Lower Saxony to people from particularly polluted areas had to be avoided.”
Or to put it another way: in order not to be overrun by vacationers blocked elsewhere, Lower Saxony is also closing.
