Virologist Christian Drosten has once again spoken out in favor of an open review of the corona pandemic. “It is often said that a review only promotes false discussions. But I think we should approach the matter with an open mind,” Drosten told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. The issue is not gone, it is simmering in the background. “We should not leave it to those who like to simmer.”
Specifically, politics, media and science should take over the process of dealing with the situation. Science must therefore “deal with its communication and its public appearance”. The question is, for example, how to get a message across to the public without it being distorted, said the virologist.
Drosten has written a book about the pandemic together with journalist Georg Mascolo. He wants to “prove what happened” once again, he told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “All sorts of distorted interpretations of the pandemic are now circulating in public.” It annoys him, for example, “when people act as if everything was as harmless at the beginning as it is after two years of the vaccination program.”
In the interview, he said of the then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU): “She thought about the topic, I felt understood by her as a scientist – and also protected.” Merkel had never “even the slightest impulse” to push decisions onto scientists. “Unfortunately, I have experienced that from other top politicians.”
His “biggest misjudgment” during the pandemic was “that I couldn’t believe that the Alpha variant was so much more transmissible than the previous one,” said Drosten. The variant, which was created by mutation, spread in Germany from the beginning of 2021 before it was displaced by the Delta variant.
Referring to a paper in which virologists Hendrik Streeck and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, together with the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), had called for significantly fewer measures before the 2020/21 winter wave, Drosten said that this was “a minority opinion” in expert circles. The Society for Virology and the major scientific organizations had opposed it.
“So I thought the central position of science was clear.” Instead, the minority opinion in the media was given “the same weight” as the majority opinion, Drosten criticized. “I could no longer say that I, as a person, am now opposed to this, it just became too controversial.” He regretted that he had not warned more clearly at that time.
Drosten again contradicted the statement that he had advised school closures early on. He did not do this at the Prime Minister’s Conference on March 12, 2020, and school closures were not included in the minutes of the meeting. “The fact that one federal state after another closed schools the next day was pure politics in which I was not involved.”
When it finally became clear in autumn 2020 that children and adults were equally likely to become infected, infection control was “a political balancing act”. “Schools, workplaces, restaurants – those are the broad categories.” In Germany, politics focused more on schools. He himself was “only slightly involved in policy advice” at that time, the virologist emphasised.