from our correspondent
BERLIN – «In the sixteenth year of Chancellor Merkel’s government, it happens sometimes the sickening feeling of living in a broken country. The old German school teacher, who had the quality mark printed in all his notebooks Made in Germany, he has become a lazy laggard who chases in international confrontations ». Sounds merciless the j’accuse of The mirror, that in its cover story it offers a dramatic and disheartening picture. That of a large country that, while the third wave of the pandemic is raging, “oscillates between chaos and rebellion” and whose apparatuses “are now unable to organize a rapid and widespread vaccination campaign”. When Europe looks to Germany as a reference and guide, the German mirror returns an image of confusion, inefficiency, absence of vision.
The Chancellor’s promise that all Germans will have an offer of getting vaccinated by the end of the summer is no longer credible. Even if the promised six million weekly doses were to begin to arrive soon, an infrastructure would be needed for their distribution and administration: “Who believes that in today’s Germany this is still possible?” Asks the weekly. And it is not, according to him Spiegel, of errors or accidents, inevitable and understandable in an emergency situation. In reality, the impression of “systemic weaknesses” and of “a dysfunctional state” is growing, while the government appears “passive, weary, unambitious and erratic in its action.”
The list of complaints is long. There was no prevention, the deregulation of health has taken the responsibility off the public hand, which has never thought about creating stocks of materials needed in cases of health emergencies. Judged useless at first, there were no reserves of masks when it turned out they were indispensable. Out of avarice and narrow-mindedness, Berlin did not push hard at the European level for more vaccines to be booked, especially as the first of these had been developed in Germany. With great delay, the federal government considered rapid tests, which had already been indicated by experts as an effective means of facilitating reopening in the spring of 2020.
When he did, instead of ordering them in time and handing them out, he fooled around expressing doubts and discussing risks. Finally, the mother of all failures, the vaccination campaign started pretty well before Christmas and then crashed not only because of the scarcity of doses, but also because nothing works: distribution, appointments, digital administration. Last week, at the time of the controversial Astra Zeneca stop, which it ended up dragging the rest of Europe into error as wellof the 3.1 million doses of the Anglo-British vaccine already delivered, 1.3 million had not yet been inoculated.
To aggravate the picture, there is a federal system that leaks water from all sides. Whether it is closures of hairdressers and brothels, schools, the obligation of masks or the organization of vaccinations, each Land has its own way. With hilarious results. In May, religious choirs were banned in Saxony, but permitted in Hamburg. In October, those staying in Cologne could not go and stay overnight in Mainz, while the opposite was possible. Each minister-president tries to stand out at the expense of others, one eye on electoral deadlines and another on internal party struggles: “The Chancellor’s periodic conference with regional prime ministers has become the symbol of administrative confusion and the powerlessness of politics,” writes the weekly.
In all of this, Angela Merkel continues to want to moderate: «If there was one thing this chancellor knows how to do, it is to manage crises. It is no longer valid. From the second wave, government policy is a Time.news of broken promises ”. Merkel knows the details, media strenuously, always keeps her nerve. But she remains unrelated to the idea of beating her fists on the table for once with the riotous premieres. Or to take charge of coordinating a European vaccine supply. “His punctual but melodramatic speeches in the Bundestag – like that the mirror—, her worried appeals sometimes seem like a grandmother’s asking the grandchildren if they are wearing warm enough clothes ».
March 20, 2021 (change March 20, 2021 | 20:47)
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