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“Accept a certain mortality”: this is the alternative to “No Covid”
Michael Hüther, director of the German Institute for Economics, calls for a “combination of low spread and good control of the virus and its consequences”
Quelle: alliance of images / dpa
The Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft advocates a gradual return to normal despite the risk of corona. Some dead would have to be accepted. You argue with huge damage elsewhere.
DThe Employer-related Institute of German Economics (IW) advocates a gradual return to normal despite the remaining corona risk. IW boss Michael Hüther and IW CEO Hubertus Bardt described how this should be successful in the document “From lockdown to the new normal”, which is available to WELT.
“Complete elimination of the virus will not be successful in our open society,” says Hüther. “So we have to accept a certain health risk and, unfortunately, also a certain mortality to be able to return to normal in the long term.”
Therefore, IW economists advocate weighing more carefully between the health risk posed by the virus and economic and social declines. On the one hand, you can see the costs of spreading the virus: damage to health, treatment costs and economic monitoring costs related to the disease.
The stricter the measures to avoid these costs, the higher the costs, on the other hand, that is, in the form of missed educational opportunities, psychological stress, costs of business closures, and restrictions on freedom.
“A social optimum should not be sought in the extreme case of avoiding it completely and without risk, but it will be in a combination of low spread and good control of the virus and its consequences”, says the IW article.
“We need a specific hotspot management”
Therefore, there is an urgent need for a social debate on how many corona cases and deaths per corona the country can and will accept. This consideration is also made with all other infectious and fatal diseases. The new infections were not enough as a key figure.
In the context of the assessment, information on specific hotspots, reasons for infection, severity of disease course, and occupancy of medical facilities should also be taken into account.
At these points, Hüther sees a difference with the so-called non-covid initiative, which, in addition to the director of the Ifo Institute, Clemens Fuest, also defends the virologist Melanie Brinkmann and the physicist Michael Meyer-Hermann of the Helmholtz Center. for infection research in Braunschweig. Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) also supports this approach.
The non-Covid strategy provides for the lifting of restrictions on daily life at the local level where the pandemic is under control and there are no new infections of unknown origin for 14 days. These “green areas” must be protected by drastic travel restrictions.
People in “red zones” where there are local infections outside of quarantine or isolation should not be allowed to visit “green zones”. Citizens weary of Crown restrictions should be motivated by the prospect of “green areas” to comply with the rules.
The “No Covid” initiative is not identical to the “Zero Covid” group, which calls for a long-range and longer lockdown. The president of Ifo, Fuest, and the economists who work in “No Covid” consider that this demand is a mistake due to the immense economic costs of monitoring that it implies.
But the head of IW, Hüther, responds: “We do not need different areas, we need specific access point management”, referring to the example of the meat industry last year. Because even if permanent restrictive measures only apply to certain areas, a comprehensive blockade of the national economy is associated “in view of the settlement structure in Europe and the spatial network through supply chains.”
In order to then live with the virus in everyday life with fewer restrictions, essentially two things are needed: “In addition to the fastest possible vaccination success, comprehensive testing should be essential for permanent monitoring of the corona situation,” write the economists. “All the technological possibilities of digitization to carry out the monitoring quickly and easily.”
Many different crown tests should be available privately in early March. The results could be integrated into a monitoring system with an interface with the health authorities. Possible inaccuracies in rapid antigen tests should be accepted. Because in general, the risk of infection is reduced. “It is always cheaper than a complete lockdown.”
