Zur Hochphase der Pandemie waren deutsche Spitzenpolitiker redselig. Detailliert sprachen sie über neue Infektionszahlen und Grenzwerte, deuteten Studien in Talkshows aus und folgerten, welche Maßnahmen dringend geboten seien. Sollen sie nun auf die Corona-Jahre zurückblicken, bleiben sie vage. Bei den Kindern sei man zu streng gewesen, sagte etwa Bundesgesundheitsminister Karl Lauterbach im Frühjahr.
Lockerungen der Corona-Regeln habe es „wahrscheinlich etwas zu spät“ gegeben, insgesamt aber ziehe er doch eine positive Bilanz. Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz drückte sich unlängst so aus: Einige Maßnahmen seien „drüber“ gewesen. Dabei bezog er sich auf verbotene Waldspaziergänge und Beerdigungen, denen Angehörige der Verstorbenen fernbleiben mussten.
Kanzler Scholz spricht sich nun für einen Bürgerrat aus, in dem zufällig ausgewählte Menschen über ihre Erfahrungen in der Pandemie sprechen sollen. Etwas mehr als ein Jahr vor der Bundestagswahl ist ein Bürgerrat, von dem auch die SPD-Fraktionsspitze spricht, aber nicht einmal beschlossen. Die FDP-Fraktion wiederum fordert eine Enquete-Kommission mit Abgeordneten und Sachverständigen aus Wissenschaft und Praxis, die einen Abschlussbericht erstellen.
Viereinhalb Jahre nach dem Pandemiebeginn überwiegt die Zahl der Fragen noch immer die Zahl der Antworten. Auch in anderen europäischen Ländern scheitert die politische Mitte bislang daran, eine befriedende Aufarbeitung der Corona-Jahre einzuleiten.
Italiens Politiker wurden fast handgreiflich
In Rom etwa kam es Mitte Februar beim Beschluss zur Einrichtung eines Untersuchungsausschusses zur Pandemiepolitik fast zu Handgreiflichkeiten. Für die Einsetzung des Ausschusses hatten die drei Parteien der Mitte-rechts-Koalition von Ministerpräsidentin Giorgia Meloni gestimmt, dagegen die Kräfte der linken Opposition.
Vor allem die linkspopulistische Fünf-Sterne-Bewegung unter Giuseppe Conte, die zu Beginn der Pandemie in Italien eine Koalition mit den Sozialdemokraten geführt hatte, argwöhnt, der Ausschuss sei ein Instrument zur politischen Hexenjagd statt zur Wahrheitsfindung. Bis heute torpedieren die Fünf Sterne und die Sozialdemokraten den Arbeitsbeginn des Ausschusses, indem sie sich weigern, Mitglieder für die Kommission zu ernennen.
Der Ausschuss soll mögliche Verfehlungen der damaligen Regierung und des damaligen Gesundheitsministers Roberto Speranza aufdecken, der wenige Monate vor der Pandemie ohne jegliche Expertise in dem Bereich an die Spitze des Ministeriums gelangt war.
Could the government have prevented deaths if it had immediately imposed a lockdown across the entire country or at least across all hotspots in Lombardy at the beginning of 2020, instead of initially just a few towns and municipalities? Were the drastic measures that were ultimately imposed – from the country-wide curfew to school and business closures to compulsory vaccination for certain professions and age groups – based on solid legal and scientific foundations?
The committee will also examine the legality of “governing through” emergency decrees without involving the legislature, as well as possible connections between government employees and pharmaceutical companies.
The long British process of coming to terms with the past
In Great Britain, however, the review has already produced initial results. It is said that health professionals prepared for the wrong pandemic (influenza). And their recommendations for emergency measures were subsequently not sufficiently heeded and implemented because the planning officials were too busy calculating the consequences of Brexit.
The head of the public inquiry, former judge Baroness Heather Hallett, found in her first interim report that there had been “a lack of adequate leadership, coordination and oversight.” Statistics recorded more than 230,000 deaths in the United Kingdom; the statistical mortality rate rose more sharply during the pandemic years than in Germany, for example, but less sharply than in Italy.
The Corona Commission’s initial findings made headlines in the UK on the day they were published, but did not spark a lengthy debate. This is mainly due to the fact that the then ruling Conservatives had been voted out of office a few days earlier. The people responsible at the time are therefore no longer in office.
In Great Britain, as in other Anglo-Saxon countries, an independent commission of inquiry is often set up when issues of socio-political importance are to be clarified or dealt with.
The chairman of such a commission is usually a high-ranking retired judge appointed by the government, but then appoints members and experts at his own discretion, requests documents and summons witnesses. The witnesses are then questioned by lawyers appointed for this purpose.
The work of the Hallett Commission will continue for years to come in the UK. The report now delivered was primarily intended as preparation for a new pandemic. Subsequent reports will focus on political action during the pandemic.
The Austrian attempt to defuse the situation
The Austrian government declared the investigation into the pandemic to be over at the end of last year. Chancellor Karl Nehammer presented the results of a project led by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). Nehammer’s conclusion: It was right to do everything possible to save lives and prevent hospitals from collapsing.
Nehammer saw the mistakes mainly in communication: thoughtless words, too few explanations, especially when it came to compulsory vaccination. “With the knowledge we have today, we would do many things differently.”
The Christian Democrat Nehammer must also have been aware that such a conclusion would not defuse the Corona issue politically. And even more so for his coalition partner, the Greens. They were not even mentioned at the presentation on the review, even though they had three health ministers during the pandemic. The fact that the conclusion of the project was presented three days before Christmas contributed to it going largely unnoticed. Those who want to may consider this an oversight.
The “turquoise-green” government in Vienna had initially hoped to defuse the Corona issue with the project. The fact that this did not succeed is mainly due to the fact that one party made considerable political capital out of it: the right-wing FPÖ.
Its chairman, former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, campaigned vigorously against all measures and thus revitalized his party, which had been on the ground since the Ibiza affair.
He was able to successfully make people forget that at the beginning of the pandemic, Kickl – like AfD leader Alice Weidel – had criticized the government for being too lax and called for isolation and border closures.
Kickl exploited the unique selling point of unrestrained, all-round criticism so skillfully that the FPÖ has been leading the polls in Austria for around a year and a half and could become the strongest force in the parliamentary elections in October.
A rhetoric of no alternative
What sets the government’s Corona misery in Vienna apart from others is, above all, the mandatory vaccination. First, it was ruled out, then decided upon in autumn 2021 after a cascade of other hasty measures, but it was not intended to be implemented until spring 2022, which then never happened.
As part of the ÖAW project, critics of the measures were invited to dialogue forums and representative surveys were conducted among the population. Sociologist Alexander Bogner outlined the results as follows: A rhetoric of no alternatives contributed to a hardening of the fronts, particularly when it came to compulsory vaccination.
Skeptical people were also confronted with moralizing arguments. From autumn 2020 onwards, the pandemic was a chronic crisis in which solidarity ebbed and scientific skepticism and polarization took hold.
Sociologist Bogner recommended looking at a crisis from different perspectives – not just from a virological point of view – as otherwise political options for action would be limited. In addition, clear boundaries should be drawn between politics, science and the media so that trust is not lost.
The former chairwoman of the German Ethics Council, Alena Buyx, recently made a similar statement in the FAZ: “It is also about the question of what this time has done to us socially, what emotions it has evoked. The answers cannot be provided solely by scientists; we must recall the sum of the experiences that exist, make them visible and learn from them,” said the medical ethicist, who had advocated restrictions for the unvaccinated during the pandemic.
In Austria, there was also a parliamentary committee of inquiry, but it only dealt with one specific aspect of the Corona measures, namely the economic compensation measures. However, the committee was not very productive in this regard because all sorts of other topics were packed into it, especially the Signa bankruptcy of the Austrian entrepreneur René Benko.
The opposition Social Democrats drew the conclusion that they had already anticipated in the topic, namely that millionaires had been favored by the government.
France’s reappraisal in real time
In France, the review of Corona policy began when the pandemic had only just begun. Three judges of the special court Cour de Justice de la République have been looking into possible government failures since July 2020. Investigations have even been launched against former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn and former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
In March 2020, a parliamentary control mission was also set up to continuously monitor pandemic management. The first report was presented in June 2020. The control mission was then transformed into a committee of inquiry.
After more than 60 hearings, the final report of December 8, 2020, comprised 220 pages listing serious failures and sloppiness in masks, testing and the handling of nursing homes.
The strategic stocks of FFP2 masks were reduced due to budgetary constraints before the pandemic. The state did not comply with its own emergency plans and only had 118 million compliant masks at the outbreak of the pandemic.
There were also delays in testing, particularly affecting nursing home residents, who accounted for half of Covid-19 deaths.
The report formulated 30 recommendations for better preparation for future health crises. Among other things, it was suggested that an annual list of the status of the state’s strategic stocks be drawn up. On December 8, 2020, the second chamber of parliament, the Senate, also presented a report from its committee of inquiry into the Corona crisis.
The Senate particularly lamented the neglect of the elderly. 93 percent of the more than 50,000 Covid-19 deaths were over 65 years old. At the same time, the Senate acknowledged the “early mobilization” of the Minister of Health, even if her repeated warnings were “not heeded or followed.”
France achieved a successful turnaround in its vaccination campaign in 2021. President Emmanuel Macron made vaccination a top priority in July 2021.
In Germany, many top politicians upheld the promise that there would be no compulsory vaccination at the time. Nine months later, the Bundestag voted on a generally compulsory corona vaccination. The majority of MPs rejected this, but the mere vote cost parts of the population trust that is still lacking today.
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