Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Syt]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-crisis-ins-idUSKBN2BO4JO

Merkel's last stand: how rebellious states hurt Germany's COVID response

BERLIN (Reuters) - It was shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday, March 22 when Angela Merkel called a break after hours of deadlocked discussion with her deputy and Germany's 16 state premiers on how to halt a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After winning international plaudits for its initial response to the pandemic last year, Germany was struggling. The number of patients in intensive care was close to the peak of the first wave a year earlier, and the vaccine rollout was proceeding at a painfully slow pace.

Merkel, in the final months of her 16-year rule, told the premiers she wanted to extend a nationwide lockdown and tighten restrictions on movement, effectively confining Germans to their homes for the upcoming Easter holidays.

The state leaders were not all game. Some rejected plans by her chief of staff, Helge Braun, to introduce curfews. Others, from the north, wanted holidays under some conditions allowed.

"That is not the right answer at this time," Merkel sighed before the giant screen showing the 14 regional leaders attending the meeting virtually.

A year into the pandemic, Germany's patchwork federal system is fraying. The unity between Berlin and the regions that marked the first year of the crisis is unravelling as many state premiers, facing pressure from business and voters, press for life to get back to normal.

The approach of a federal election in September is straining those political threads even further.

State leaders including North Rhine-Westphalia premier Armin Laschet, chairman of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and her would-be successor, are more eager to open up as they look ahead to the election in September, when Merkel is stepping down.

In contrast Merkel, who doesn't have to face the verdict of voters again, wants to double down with her push for tougher measures. She has even publicly criticized Laschet for his state's loose policing of restrictions.

Fractious federal-state relations are not entirely to blame for Germany's fumbling pandemic response: Berlin has also been accused of cautiousness and investing too much faith in the European Union for its vaccine rollout. But they have become an obstacle to taking coordinated, quick action as patience wears thin on all sides, resulting in policy flip-flops and waning support for Merkel's conservative camp.

The increasingly tense relationship between Merkel and state leaders "only exacerbates pandemic mismanagement and comes back to hurt the CDU and CSU," the Bavarian sister to Merkel's party, said Naz Masraff at political risk consultancy Eurasia.

Exasperated by the deadlock at last week's talks, Merkel turned to her chief of staff Braun, a 48-year-old doctor with intensive care experience, and asked him for other suggestions.

The break was planned for 15 minutes but lasted six hours. Conservative and Social Democrat premiers split into separate huddles. Left hanging, Bodo Ramelow, the far-left Linke premier of Thuringia, turned to Reiner Haseloff of neighbouring Saxony Anhalt, and they killed time browsing different video conferencing screen backdrops.

Eventually, Braun came back with a plan for a five-day circuit breaker shutdown over Easter. Since shops in Germany would already be closed on Easter Friday, Sunday and Monday, they would only have to close for two extra days - Thursday and Saturday. Merkel ran the plan by the state leaders and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) candidate for the chancellery.

They approved, Merkel closed the meeting at 2.30 a.m, and presented the plan to bleary-eyed journalists with the premiers of Bavaria and Berlin.

Then the trouble started. Merkel's own, wider camp balked.

At 10:45 a.m. Alexander Dobrindt, deputy leader of her conservative bloc in parliament, asked for "improvements". Then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer complained that churches would be reduced to online services at Easter.

The resistance grew and on the Wednesday morning Merkel made a swift and remarkable decision: drop the plan. Summoning the state premiers again online, she informed them of her U-turn and at 12:30 p.m. addressed the nation.

"This mistake is mine alone," she said from the chancellery. "I ask all citizens for forgiveness."

The unusual, four-minute mea culpa proved a clever tactic. Merkel won plaudits from her own camp and the opposition for her honesty, and attention quickly focused on the state leaders - who agreed to the plan - and on the dysfunction of their meetings with the chancellor.

"What was seen by some commentators as a sign of weakness was in fact a way to get from a defensive point onto the attack," said a person close to Merkel, speaking on condition of anonymity.

That point of attack was aimed at the state premiers. Not even Laschet was spared.

In a Sunday night talk show, Merkel accused him and some other state leaders of disregarding a March 3 agreement on how to manage the national lockdown.

As the federal regions wield power over health and security issues, Merkel, who is still Germany's most popular politician, is resorting to such name and shame tactics to cajole the state leaders into taking tougher action.

Her popularity helps: a survey by pollster Civey for the Augsburger Allgemeine daily showed two thirds of 5,002 people questioned this week backed Merkel's approach and believed she should intervene more strongly in the states' pandemic response.

She is gaining some traction.

On Tuesday, Brandenburg tightened its guidelines and Laschet said his state had imposed a so-called "emergency brake" by requiring people to test negative before visiting some shops.

While the politicians bicker, time is running short.

Germany's vaccine supplies are due to ramp up from April, though changing guidance on the AstraZeneca shot has put many Germans off it. The country's leading virologist has warned a tougher lockdown will be needed anyway. None is in sight.

The intransigence is costing the CDU/CSU alliance, which has lost 10 points in polls since early February.

"We are in a miserable state at the moment, and we have to get out of it," lamented one conservative lawmaker. "I have never experienced the mood like this in our ranks before."

[Richard Hakluyt]

They should have listened to mutti 

[Syt]

In Austria, the states of Lower Austria and Burgenland finally agreed to join Vienna in the extended lockdown till 11th. Though they couch it in language to the effect that they don't do it because they have to, but to be in solidarity with Vienna.

The 7 day case numbers per 100k:



I was wrong about Vorarlberg, their numbers didn't double but almost triple in the last 2 weeks since restaurants reopened.

[celedhring]

Covid 7-day rate and increase vs last week, per province.

[Syt]

7 day case numbers per 100k based on WHO data:

[Zanza]

On the Merkel article above: I read a poignant headline today that Laschet might be Merkel's "last victim". She has eclipsed in some way or another at least ten high ranking (mainly male) conservatives...

[Sheilbh]

Reading an article with bits of Macron's address to the French announcing a new lockdown and it could have been cut and paste from Johnson in December - even down to the lockdown measures mainly starting after the Easter weekend

As with us in December it just feels entirely predictable - and actually predicted by lots of people.

[Syt]

On the Merkel article above: I read a poignant headline today that Laschet might be Merkel's "last victim". She has eclipsed in some way or another at least ten high ranking (mainly male) conservatives...

Well, Laschet hasn't been looking great throughout this crisis. It doesn't help that he said in a recent interview that the country as a whole is in a desolate state - to which the interviewer replied, "Well, your party has been in power for the last 16 years." Laschet insisted that the two had nothing to do with each other.

[Iormlund]

Mexico City's excess deaths are falling now but, all told, it looks like about 1% of the city have died of covid in the last 9 months or so.

this isn't that bad

In Mexico average age is a little over 29 years old though. For comparison in the US it is 38 yo. In Spain, over 43.

[Syt]

Also, not sure I agree it isn't "that bad" (unless it's a sarcastic reference to AR's line of argument in the facebook thread). 1% dead in Vienna would be almost 20,000 people (Austria as a whole is at 9368, which is a bit over 0.1%; Vienna stands at a bit over 1900 deaths so far).

[Eddie Teach]

I'd assume he's mocking Dorsey.

[Sheilbh]

Why? It is pretty important that we get all those things open as soon as possible. Also theatres and the like. Why are you against using vaccine passports to do that faster? I don't understand why that is authoritarian. Shutting them down for months longer for no reason strikes me as more authoritarian.

If you want to go see a play or a music show or go to a movie, what is wrong with letting vaccinated people do that? I don't get the fucking paranoia. I needed vaccination records to go to Elementary School and there wasn't a damn pandemic going on in 1983.

To be honest I just don't see the point (except for international travel) I think we'd be building a system that would be redundant in autumn.

It feels to me like something you'd only really need if you didn't have trust/faith in the vaccination program or if the disease had a very high R like measles or smallpox. So far all the evidence from the vaccines is that they're better in a real-life setting than expected - especially at reducing transmission. The US program's happening very quickly now, so the UK and US should hit population immunity levels by the summer and we might then start rolling it out to teenagers (very encouraging Pfizer results); Europe is on course to be about 55-60% vaccinated by the end of Q2 so will be a month or two later. That plus border measures and public health controls should be enough to more or less end restrictions. It's how we deal with most other infectious diseases.

All of that is on course for the next few months. So I just don't really get the point of building this entire new system which will have a discriminatory element because there are people who can't or shouldn't have the vaccine for a few months. I also think from a resource perspective that it's a distraction and, in the UK at least, we'd be far better working on a test and trace system that works so we can deal with outbreaks and preparing for booster shots.

Having said all that I think they're definitely coming in the UK - Labour and Lib Dems are opposed as are a number of Tories on authoritarian v liberal grounds. I have no doubt that it'll be as effective and watertight as the test and trace app

[Syt]

Btw, 95% of cases in Vienna are now B.1.1.7.

[Sheilbh]

This Macron line in particular sounds just like Johnson - and I think a lot of European leaders and is why we are where we are: "we did everything we could to make these decisions as late as possible, until they became strictly necessary, which is now"

[Iormlund]

We really need to close our borders to anyone without proof of vaccination.