German health minister: "We will continue to boost and vaccinate until we have brought the pandemic to an end"

Assumption of office in the Ministry of Health. Karl Lauterbach leaves no doubt that his predecessor Jens Spahn did the best he could during his tenure. When Spahn stopped speaking, Lauterbach would have wished that he would stay. Because: “The house could use two ministers.” That sounded a little different in the talk shows that Lauterbach has attended in the last two years. But in the face of the new task - Lauterbach looks very satisfied - the new minister is grateful. There has always been a good collaboration. He thanks Spahn personally in front of the entire ministry.

Lauterbach stays in the same tone of voice when he emphasizes the importance of the "house" in fighting the pandemic. But he already changes his "own assessment" when he emphasizes his origin. He is a doctor and scientist himself, he heads an institute, and his approach comes from this environment. "From my point of view, health policy can only be successful if it is anchored in science, in evidence-based medicine."

The native of Düren confirms the image that the media draw of him: Lauterbach, the scientist who knows the studies and weighs them up better than others. Lauterbach only recently demonstrated the status of the supposed factual knowledge when he classified the Omikron variant as particularly dangerous for children, but had no evidence for this.

The viewer stops. Next months? And he faltered again, because the new Minister of Health has not yet reached the real climax. “We will start exactly where ex-Minister Spahn has just described it, the 30 million vaccinations by the end of the year. (...) We will procure vaccine to bring this successful booster vaccination campaign into the next few months, and we will then continue this work in the months after that with new vaccines adapted to the Omikron variant. We will continue to boost and vaccinate until we have brought the pandemic to an end. "

Lauterbach does not explain what the end of the pandemic will look like. Vaccinations and boosters into eternity - or only in the “next months” when you want to bring them to an end? In Bild, Lauterbach revised these positions just a day and a half later. Corona will accompany us for its own term of office, i.e. at least four years. That is why a dense vaccination network decides the future. A fourth vaccination is in the room. The end of the pandemic is not only far away - the fact that it is now not a medical classification, but a political decision, is completely lost. A request to the Federal Ministry of Health as to how the new Minister of Health defines the “end of the pandemic” has so far remained unanswered.

Source: Tichys Einblick

Photo: Imago.