2024-08-12 23:22:11
In the debate about a review of Corona policy, FDP Vice President Kubicki once again attacks the Federal Minister of Health. He demands consequences following the leak of the so-called RKI protocols.
Following the publication of unredacted documents about the meetings of the Corona crisis team at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), FDP Vice President and Vice President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kubicki has called for personal consequences from Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). In a long text on his website, Kubicki comments on the so-called RKI files. He said he had taken a closer look at them, especially the period from January 2021 to spring 2022. With regard to the documents, the FDP politician accuses Health Minister Lauterbach of having told untruths.
The documents have not yet been released by the RKI itself. A group led by a journalist who is one of the critics of the federal government’s corona policy said they had received the documents from a source at the institute, uploaded them to the Internet and also presented them at a press conference. The RKI stated that it had “neither checked nor verified” the data sets. According to Lauterbach, the institute plans to publish its protocols itself at an as yet undisclosed date.
The papers show what the crisis team discussed at its regular meetings during the Corona period: current infection figures, the international situation, vaccinations, tests, studies or containment measures.
According to Kubicki, the published documents prove that the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) influenced the RKI strategy, for example with regard to the corona risk assessment. At the urging of the BMG, the RKI artificially kept public pressure on the pandemic high, writes the FDP politician, linking this to the planned corona vaccination requirement, which did not find a majority in the Bundestag in 2022.
In his letter, Kubicki confronts the health minister with his statement from March that the RKI worked independently of political instructions. “Karl Lauterbach has caused serious damage to the reputation of the federal government through his irresponsible attitude to the truth and has fueled doubts about the integrity of state action. He must draw personal consequences.” Kubicki does not mention the word resignation.
It is not the first time that he has suggested such a step to Lauterbach in connection with Corona. At the beginning of 2023, there was already a dispute in the traffic light coalition over the health minister’s pandemic policy. “Nobody would accuse Karl Lauterbach of resigning honorably,” Kubicki wrote on Facebook at the time. He sharply criticized the Corona policy of the past few years. It had failed particularly with children and the elderly. Children’s chances in life had been deprived of by deliberately creating fear, and the elderly in nursing homes had been treated inhumanely.
In his current contribution, the FDP vice-chairman demands that the various dimensions of the corona pandemic must be urgently addressed in parliament “in order to avoid future mistakes and to heal social wounds.” He ties a possible future participation of the FDP in another traffic light coalition with the SPD and the Greens to this condition.