How Germany tries to shut down controversial opinions on Covid

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Four Things

• Markus Söder just can’t let it go. After conceding defeat in his attempt to become conservative Chancellor candidate last week, he complained in a newspaper interview that Germany needed someone who embodied the current Zeitgeist rather than “Helmut Kohl 2.0” (a none-too-subtle hint that Armin Laschet is a dinosaur). This is the same Mr Söder who spent 2018 hammering crosses into the wall of every Bavarian town hall before he realized that mimicking the AfD wasn’t quite the vote winner he thought it would be. If the Zeitgeist changes as often as his political convictions, the German public would have multiple personality disorders by the end of a Söder Chancellorship. Mr Söder also insisted he was relived his “offer” of being Chancellor candidate wasn’t accepted as it would have meant leaving “the most beautiful country in the world” - Bavaria.

• In most of the country's care homes, elderly residents still can’t meet freely in communal areas despite the fact that almost all of…