The minutes of crisis meetings at Germany's public health agency have been released. They are more interesting for what they don't tell us than for what we now know.
I have no doubt that democratically elected governments the world over were primarily motivated to prevent large scale death in their populations. Everyone knows about the Spanish Flu epidemic that killed tens of millions globally and governments wanted to avoid that happening on their watch. Temporary suspension of civil liberties is fine if it achieves the aim of harm reduction. Mistakes made by policy makers can be accepted if they were made in good faith, and they acknowledge it retrospectively in a review.
The problem is that all the advice and modelling was hypothetical, there was no clear and obvious path to minimise the spread and mortality of the virus. In retrospect the use of PPE by the public was a waste of time and money, no one used them properly, at least according to standard operating procedures of PPE used in any hospital. I'm not just talking about the ridiculous examples on TikTok like the American woman who cut a slit in her mask so she could breathe easier, or people who just wore them on their chin. We are supposed to wash our hands thoroughly before touching the mask and change them frequently, which no one did. Sheets of one metre square perspex in a shop isn't going to prevent microscopic particles diffusing in the air. Preventing large gatherings however probably did slow down transmission rates, which bought more time for vaccine development and roll out.
There are however much bigger and more interesting questions to be asked of the pandemic than what policy was or wasn't effective.
i) how are deaths reported - each country was responsible for its own figures and determined itself what criteria to use, leading to wildly differing figures useless for making comparisons and thereby assessing the effectiveness of any policy implemented in any given country
ii) government mandates created brand new markets to which the private sector responded with ruthless profiteering. How can that be prevented and did those business opportunities influence policy making
iii) Occam's Razor points to the virus escaping the lab via an unwitting technician who popped into the market on the way home from work. No deliberate intent just negligence. How has this been lumped together with all the batshit conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and microchips etc.? Has the Institute gotten away with it?
Is it true that the health minister is trying to blame Russia/FSB on the publication of RKI files? I found a couple sources hinting at this, but I don’t speak German, and the one that was in English didn’t seem to translate well.
“He says that the Russian secret service is to blame and that the RKI files were only exposed to destroy the traffic lights”
What do traffic lights have to do with the RKI files? Probably about as much as the FSB, but I’m curious what was meant by this. Was it just a joke, or did the health minister really try to make such a connection? Or maybe FSB is accused of meddling with traffic lights as a separate issue? See links below:
and yes, as the other comment points out, traffic light is the nickname for the current coalition (because the parties colours are red, yellow and green).
Hi Dom, thanks for commenting and I hope you find the article useful. Karl Lauterbach, the German health minister, didn't suggest that Russia was behind the publication of the RKI files. That's not impossible, but he claimed that Russian agents helped to push false interpretation of a scandal inside them online. He never provided any proof for this claim. Lauterbach, btw, only became health minister because he spent every evening pushing the most drastic projections about Covid on public television before the 2021 election. That went down well with a section of the public who campaigned for him to become health minister.
Yes, I found the article to be very informative, and I just subscribed. Also, thanks for replying to my comment.
I was wondering how I could verify the October 2020 date that RKI recommended against FFP2 masks for public use. That is several months after the US CDC and WHO were tangling over the issue.
Plus, it was well known that COVID spread from asymptomatic people by that time, so RKI can’t use the excuse that it was an evolving process with the development of new information. Their decision was likely based on increased face touching and an imperfect seal, along with less adherence to social distancing, in spite of asymptomatic spread. At least, that was WHO’s justification.
Could you possibly share a link to the RKI files that have been released so far? Hopefully online translation will help me with the language barrier.
> But if there is anything we’ve learned over the past four years it is that subordinating every aspect of public life to the goal of disease control is not a great idea.
I really get the impression that you do not believe movement and contact restrictions were beneficial in preventing the spread of a deadly disease. I'm concerned my subscription money is supporting a COVID-denier...
It's not about denying COVID, it's about assessing the costs against benefits with all the data possible - and if overreaches were done in the name of health 'advice' which was not actually so, then this should be made public and individuals responsible held accountable.
It always puzzled me why Germany never had a COVID enquiry like Britain. I put it down to a less developed democratic tradition. The state still knows best, come what may.
I have no doubt that democratically elected governments the world over were primarily motivated to prevent large scale death in their populations. Everyone knows about the Spanish Flu epidemic that killed tens of millions globally and governments wanted to avoid that happening on their watch. Temporary suspension of civil liberties is fine if it achieves the aim of harm reduction. Mistakes made by policy makers can be accepted if they were made in good faith, and they acknowledge it retrospectively in a review.
The problem is that all the advice and modelling was hypothetical, there was no clear and obvious path to minimise the spread and mortality of the virus. In retrospect the use of PPE by the public was a waste of time and money, no one used them properly, at least according to standard operating procedures of PPE used in any hospital. I'm not just talking about the ridiculous examples on TikTok like the American woman who cut a slit in her mask so she could breathe easier, or people who just wore them on their chin. We are supposed to wash our hands thoroughly before touching the mask and change them frequently, which no one did. Sheets of one metre square perspex in a shop isn't going to prevent microscopic particles diffusing in the air. Preventing large gatherings however probably did slow down transmission rates, which bought more time for vaccine development and roll out.
There are however much bigger and more interesting questions to be asked of the pandemic than what policy was or wasn't effective.
i) how are deaths reported - each country was responsible for its own figures and determined itself what criteria to use, leading to wildly differing figures useless for making comparisons and thereby assessing the effectiveness of any policy implemented in any given country
ii) government mandates created brand new markets to which the private sector responded with ruthless profiteering. How can that be prevented and did those business opportunities influence policy making
iii) Occam's Razor points to the virus escaping the lab via an unwitting technician who popped into the market on the way home from work. No deliberate intent just negligence. How has this been lumped together with all the batshit conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and microchips etc.? Has the Institute gotten away with it?
Is it true that the health minister is trying to blame Russia/FSB on the publication of RKI files? I found a couple sources hinting at this, but I don’t speak German, and the one that was in English didn’t seem to translate well.
“He says that the Russian secret service is to blame and that the RKI files were only exposed to destroy the traffic lights”
What do traffic lights have to do with the RKI files? Probably about as much as the FSB, but I’m curious what was meant by this. Was it just a joke, or did the health minister really try to make such a connection? Or maybe FSB is accused of meddling with traffic lights as a separate issue? See links below:
https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/wp-print.php?p=113319
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt31924200/
and yes, as the other comment points out, traffic light is the nickname for the current coalition (because the parties colours are red, yellow and green).
Hi Dom, thanks for commenting and I hope you find the article useful. Karl Lauterbach, the German health minister, didn't suggest that Russia was behind the publication of the RKI files. That's not impossible, but he claimed that Russian agents helped to push false interpretation of a scandal inside them online. He never provided any proof for this claim. Lauterbach, btw, only became health minister because he spent every evening pushing the most drastic projections about Covid on public television before the 2021 election. That went down well with a section of the public who campaigned for him to become health minister.
Yes, I found the article to be very informative, and I just subscribed. Also, thanks for replying to my comment.
I was wondering how I could verify the October 2020 date that RKI recommended against FFP2 masks for public use. That is several months after the US CDC and WHO were tangling over the issue.
Plus, it was well known that COVID spread from asymptomatic people by that time, so RKI can’t use the excuse that it was an evolving process with the development of new information. Their decision was likely based on increased face touching and an imperfect seal, along with less adherence to social distancing, in spite of asymptomatic spread. At least, that was WHO’s justification.
Could you possibly share a link to the RKI files that have been released so far? Hopefully online translation will help me with the language barrier.
Traffic light is a political coalition of the Green, SDP, and FDP political parties.
No idea why russia needs to be blamed for asking basic questions about how things happened...
> But if there is anything we’ve learned over the past four years it is that subordinating every aspect of public life to the goal of disease control is not a great idea.
I really get the impression that you do not believe movement and contact restrictions were beneficial in preventing the spread of a deadly disease. I'm concerned my subscription money is supporting a COVID-denier...
It's not about denying COVID, it's about assessing the costs against benefits with all the data possible - and if overreaches were done in the name of health 'advice' which was not actually so, then this should be made public and individuals responsible held accountable.
It always puzzled me why Germany never had a COVID enquiry like Britain. I put it down to a less developed democratic tradition. The state still knows best, come what may.