German virologist Christian Drosten became a prominent national figure during the COVID-19 pandemic. He recently claimed that history is now being rewritten by dishonest actors who want to polish their public image. "The dispute over fundamental issues did not exist in science in the way it was presented in talk shows. That was infotainment," Drosten told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. "The pandemic is history, and we shouldn't twist it."
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), the populist party led by Sahra Wagenknecht, who opposed state-imposed measures to prevent the spread of the virus, as did the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), have been pushing for an investigative committee to examine policy-making during the pandemic. The BSW accuse the government of exerting undue political influence on the Robert Koch Institute, Germany's federal disease control agency, and the "suppression of dissenting positions in public discourse," according to the motion.
Mask mandates, curfews, school closures, bans on demonstrations and mandatory vaccinations for health and care workers: The measures introduced by the government — first under Angela Merkel of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) then under current center-left coalition headed by Social Democrat (SPD) Olaf Scholz — to stop the spread of COVID-19 and mitigate its impact were sometimes highly controversial.
But while some of those in charge of policy-making at the time have admitted that mistakes were made and they would do certain things differently now, they also point to the unprecedented scale of the crisis as the health service was pushed to its limit. Germany saw 174,979 deaths and 38,437,756 cases by December 19, 2023, after the first person in the country tested positive on January 27, 2020.
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