EIt is a bitter truth that Lothar Wieler, former President of the Robert Koch Institute, stated in an interview with the newspaper “Zeit” last week: “There was never only one alternative: either few deaths or keep schools open”, said Wieler. Even in the early phases of the pandemic, when hardly anything was known about infectiousness, incidences, R values and risk groups, the RKI always made recommendations “with which schools and daycare centers could have been run, albeit under Effort.”
But politics and society have set different priorities, not only in Germany but worldwide. Dropping out of school, homeschooling and alternating classes seemed the better way through the pandemic. The resulting learning deficit was accepted. And so the term “Generation Corona” was coined, which describes children whose school education lags behind that of previous generations – and who, as more and more studies show, will probably have to deal with it for the rest of their lives.