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Something has to happen: The situation in Germany's intensive care units is worsening, and it will continue to worsen, this is already being ensured by the third wave of infections since the beginning of the corona pandemic in Germany.

This is - as far as you can see from the data fog generated with test and reporting delays - undamaged through the Easter holidays.

Something has to happen, and if something doesn't happen now soon, a lot more will have to happen a little later.

When the Bergamo scenario becomes a realistic perspective again, a temporary game is simply irresponsible.

Something has to happen, and something does happen, but unfortunately the wrong thing: the passage of the Infection Protection Amendment Act.

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The work, as far as is known so far, is a testimony to the lack of ideas.

Under certain circumstances, mobility is only postponed

It specifies curfews between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., a draconian measure of epidemiologically dubious value: They are certainly not a “game changer”, as only about a tenth of all movements take place during the said time.

It is also possible that mobility will only be postponed - with the result that there will be clusters at train stations, for example, that would otherwise not have existed.

In the end, curfews can even be drivers of infection.

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Hung up, and worse, the curfews and other lockdown measures are at the incidence.

It has its bad reputation wrongly: In the corona pandemic, it is rightly the central benchmark for assessing the intensity of the infection process.

A completely different question is whether the incidence is also suitable as a threshold value for political measures, as it should now even be stipulated by federal law: 100 newly reported cases per 100,000 inhabitants, that should be the hop-or-top limit.

Any city or county that is above it for three days is said to have to go into a hard lockdown.

Aerosol researchers warn against symbolic politics

Even after the Easter break, Germany is far from normal.

Most of the schools are reopening, with compulsory testing.

But especially indoors, the risk of transmission is very high, according to aerosol researchers.

Source: WELT / Sandra Saatmann

Everyone knows that 100 is not 100.

There is a huge difference - also for intensive care medicine - whether 35 percent of the people over 60 are hidden behind it (like around Christmas) or 15 percent (like at present).

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It makes a huge difference whether the 100 in a county comes from a single large outbreak in a home or meat factory that is comparatively easy to isolate, or from countless smaller outbreaks.

But what is even more serious are the false incentives that the new system of rules will put before mayors and district administrators.

None of the local decision-makers will want to expose their citizens to a lockdown XXL if they can somehow avoid it.

And nobody will want to stand up to their citizens if the Corona regime switches back and forth between Lockdown M and Lockdown XXL several times within a few weeks, while in the neighboring district everything goes its halfway normal course.

The temptation to try fewer tests to get or stay below 100 will be great.

The temptation not to report case numbers or to report only incompletely will be tempting.

Allies and fellow players - or even opponents

And this at a time when everyone agrees that more needs to be tested and that infection numbers should be updated faster and more precisely.

Clever corona policy involves the energetic, competent decision-makers on site, it turns the mayors and district administrators into allies, into players.

The Infection Protection Amendment Act makes them opponents.

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