This prognosis destroys itself within six weeks: What at first sounds like a bad agent film seems to be the unofficial motto of some corona prophecies in Germany.

In mid-March, for example, the Robert Koch Institute wrote: "The extrapolation of the trends shows that in calendar week 14, the number of cases above the level of Christmas can be expected."

Other models showed even worse courses.

But it turned out differently.

The exponential growth in the number of infections was soon broken.

They even began to sink at the end of April, even before the federal emergency brake could really work.

Patrick Bernau

Responsible editor for economics and "Money & More" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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    What was it? The seasonality of the virus, the vaccination progress? Do people even become more cautious when they have a vaccination appointment in mind - or was it something completely different? Last week, the head of the institute, Lothar Wieler, exemplified what some other modelers say: It was because people reacted to the prognosis. "That is also an appeal to the population," said Wieler. And: “That is also the aim of forecasts.” The Germans recognized the danger that they were less mobile than expected over Easter. So the prognosis really destroyed itself. Isn't that possible better? Perhaps.

    This phenomenon has been discussed for months as a “prevention paradox”.

    The problem with it: Regardless of how great the forecast requirements are in the individual models - if the predicted numbers are systematically higher than the actual events, then their benefit remains limited in the better case.

    In the worse case, science loses confidence in the population with every false prognosis.

    The problem is not new

    The social sciences have known such problems for a long time. And found some answers. “Unlike all other natural systems, humans react to prognoses or theories about them,” says Jens Beckert, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. “That makes the social sciences so complex.” The phenomenon is so well known that there are many words for it. Since 1948 sociology has spoken of self-fulfilling or self-destructive prophecies, economics of so-called endogeneities, psychology of "feedback loops" - all of them are related concepts. The psychotherapist Jan Kalbitzer, who heads stress medicine at the Oberberg Kliniken, often uses such phenomena in therapy. He says to some patients: "From my experience I believe: You will be fine." The goal:lighten the mood and help the patient improve.

    Feedback loops are very central in economics. Business studies in particular not only convey factual knowledge, but also a way of thinking: always taking people's reactions into account. Economists search obsessively for the so-called equilibrium, in which the state of the world and the corresponding reaction of people create a stable state. “There are physicists who say that we cannot calculate correctly,” says the former chairman of the economic department, Lars Feld. "We then always point out that we are not dealing with particles, but with people."