Edgar Pinkowski has a clear message, which he packs in a request: "Get vaccinated!", The President of the State Medical Association of Hesse appealed to the audience of a panel discussion in Bad Nauheim.
The chamber had invited to the event for Friday evening, during which it should be about "processing, interim balance and outlook" of the corona pandemic - that was the subtitle.
Of the six experts from medicine, politics and law on the podium, some had expressed themselves controversially in the recent past.
The internist Matthias Schrappe had put forward the thesis that the hospitals had calculated their intensive care capacities artificially small.
He and his working group had received a lot of criticism for their thesis paper.
Since the Federal Audit Office is now also investigating the issue, Schrappe sees himself and his theses confirmed.
On Friday evening he also criticized that the federal government had created a “suffocation narrative” to justify the lockdowns.
This fueled the fear of citizens that they would no longer be able to get a hospital bed with a ventilator if they became seriously ill with Covid-19.
Virologists and Politics
René Gottschalk, long-time head of the Frankfurt health department, has also had different experiences with the public discourse. Above all, the focus on virologists as key experts in the pandemic bothered him. Although they could describe the virus itself well, setting standards for public health is neither their task nor their expertise. "A virologist shouldn't decide whether schools should be closed," said Gottschalk. In addition, not all the rules that are being discussed with regard to schools are useful. “There is no study that shows that air filters are useful.” It is more important to have good hygiene and distance concepts and then to adhere to them.
Pediatrician Hans-Iko Huppertz also deals with schools. "I don't understand why there can be unvaccinated teachers," he said. As an employer, the state must be stricter when individual teachers put their personal views above the well-being of the students.
How the legislation was justified in the pandemic was the main concern of the lawyer Uwe Volkmann during the discussion.
The professor of public law and legal philosophy at the University of Frankfurt said: "Basically, all 19 basic rights were restricted in one way or another during the pandemic." This can be justified to protect the population as long as there is no sufficient opportunity for self-protection before Covid-19 give.
The vaccination, however, represents precisely this self-protection. So when all citizens have had the opportunity to be vaccinated, restrictions are no longer justifiable.
"It is not the citizen who has to justify his freedom, but the state for its restriction."
"Everything will not always go forward"
Landtag Vice President Jörg-Uwe Hahn (FDP) does not want to leave responsibility to the state alone, as he said. "It will not always go well," he pointed out. A society often has to contend with setbacks. Therefore, a risk management system is needed for a society that is “basically doing well”. With regard to political action, he was less critical of the guidelines themselves. Instead, the back and forth bothered him, especially when it comes to rules for retail and gastronomy.