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On Wednesday the federal and state governments will decide on further measures to deal with the pandemic, and in the end it will probably be said again that they have bowed to the assessments of science.

This impression has been created since the beginning of the crisis: politics, it only reacts to the findings of the experts.

What should be has to be.

It was not for nothing that Chancellor Angela Merkel compared Covid-19 at the end of 2020 to “a natural disaster”.

But: what if politics gives science the desired research goal in advance?

Research by WELT AM SONNTAG indicates that this is exactly what happened in spring 2020.

Accordingly, the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) asked researchers to develop a model on the basis of which "preventive and repressive measures" could be planned.

Not just any researchers, but those from the Robert Koch Institute, the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, the Institute of German Economy, the Science and Politics Foundation and several universities.

They all enjoyed participating.

During the drafting process, the state secretary of the ministry was in close contact with the scientists, including RKI boss Lothar Wieler.

The State Secretary referred to him as "my friend" in previously secret e-mails.

After four days the paper was ready: The scientists warned of a million corona deaths and gave tips on how to achieve the “desired shock effect”: “Many seriously ill people are taken to hospital by their relatives, but they are turned away and die in agony struggling at home. "

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If politicians seek independent advice from science, everything is fine in a pandemic with regard to restrictions on fundamental rights.

But when science becomes the extended arm of politics, something goes really wrong.

Then people lose confidence in the decision-makers.

In the past few weeks, approval for the government's course has fallen, and this presumably has to do not least with the experts selected by those in power.

The powerful are happy to seek advice from lockdown hardliners, other strategies are usually blurred.

In connection with the commissioned work of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, a statement by Berlin's Governing Mayor Michael Müller from mid-January is now even more interesting.

After the lockdown was extended, he said that they were on the right track: all the experts consulted had confirmed: "Without exception."

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