An angry Boris Palmer wants to replace all previous corona measures with Markus Lanz on ZDF: “I’m fed up now!”
Hamburg – Signs and miracles are still happening in the Stahltwiete 14 studio in Hamburg-Altona. Where the ticket for Markus Lanz’s ZDF program cost eight euros before the pandemic began. For two years there has been no live applause for the moderator and the guests of the talk round, for which you can also pay. The sometimes long-suffering audience, which in the eternal recurrence of the same thing is constantly exposed to the same faces and topics in the round of talks, only watches from home via Smart TV, laptop or mobile phone.
Rather, the signs and wonders refer to two well-known faces who have always had different opinions because of their party affiliation. At least this is different on January 25, 2022: Boris Palmer, Mayor of Tübingen (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), and Daniel Günther, Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein (CDU), jointly advocate compulsory vaccination, which they believe will reduce the leading the pandemic to an endemic situation.
Markus Lanz (ZDF): Boris Palmer insists on compulsory vaccination
That’s not enough: They praise each other about the black-green clover. Rare harmony with Markus Lanz, which is intended to suggest to us, the potential voters, in front of the screen: Everything will be fine when vaccination is compulsory in this country! Austria showed us how! A virologist, of all people, acts as a spoilsport: Hendrik Streeck, who has been Director of the Institute for Virology and HIV Research at the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn since October 2019 and a member of the Federal Government’s Corona Expert Council since December 2021, does not see it as easy. Although there is a higher level of protection through vaccination, it is not immune to infection: “We cannot vaccinate the pandemic!” It is therefore important to him to equate the recovered status with the vaccination status.
As we know, following the recommendation of the RKI, the (new) government decided exactly the opposite. However, despite the shortening of the convalescent status from six to three months in the Bundestag, the old deadline still applies in some cases. The reason that is the last straw for many citizens: The MPs have simply not yet updated the rules … SZ editor Cerstin Gammelin, always welcome by Lanz in his format, also attacks the most recent Prime Ministers’ Conference, which maintained all previous measures : “When I see the resolutions, I have the impression that there is a risk of the state losing control.”
Markus Lanz (ZDF): Broadcast from January 25, 2022 – the guests
| Boris Palmer | Mayor of Tübingen |
| Daniel Gunther | Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein |
| Henrik Streeck | virologist |
| Cerstin Gammelin | SZ editor |
| Corinna Milborn | journalist and political scientist |
Boris Palmer wants to replace all corona measures with compulsory vaccination
Even if Streeck is the voice of reason on this Tuesday evening, the (talk) show clearly steals Palmer from him. He is a lateral thinker in the traditional sense, when this term was also meant appreciatively and was not mutated by a mob of corona deniers and right-wing extremists into a swear word frequently used by the “silent majority” according to Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Although Streeck disagrees with him, Palmer praises him as someone he was always “happy” to see on television because “the panic orchestra didn’t play quite as loud” because of him.
And then the controversial politician, against whom the own state executive in Baden-Württemberg officially applied for party expulsion on November 15, 2021, conjures up an amazing idea out of a non-existent hat just in time for the first discussion about compulsory vaccination in the German Bundestag on Wednesday afternoon: Everyone previous “Corona” rules should be replaced by a single one! He means the introduction of a general obligation to vaccinate, but in any case one for citizens over 50 years of age. That could happen in the next week of meetings in mid-February at the earliest. Then when the apex of the current omicron wave is likely to be reached.
Boris Palmer talks himself into a rage in the ZDF talk with Markus Lanz: “Snout full!”
Outraged, the man who in 2014 described the cessation of experiments on rhesus monkeys at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen as a “setback for research” and thus angered animal rights activists and in April 2020 with the sentence “We save in Germany there may be people who would be dead in six months anyway” the rest of the nation, the seriousness of the situation: PCR tests would have to be prioritized, contacts could no longer be traced, a court in Baden-Württemberg also issued the 2G Plus Rule overturned in retail. “We now need something other than a bureaucratized individual case regulation that produces absurd excesses,” he says in a rage: “I’m fed up now!”
He knows enough entrepreneurs in Tübingen who want to build something up. “We need a different solution now,” demands Palmer, who speaks out vehemently against the constant encroachments on fundamental rights, including those of vaccinated, boosted and recovered people. He sees a panacea in the general obligation to vaccinate. Through them, the basic immunization of all Germans would finally take place. Because: “The critical infrastructure is then no longer overloaded.” His logic is simple, but it sounds seductive: “We forget all the old rules. We replace that with a single rule: Everyone must be vaccinated. Everyone understands that, and then it will happen.”
After two or three vaccinations, sufficient protection against hospitalization is achieved. No later than three months after all German citizens have been vaccinated, the other measures would have to be discontinued: “Then we can live normally again.” Not only moderator Markus Lanz sighed with relief. Günther is also impressed by the suggestion: “We need a paradigm shift. I would go along with it if they said that vaccination would replace all the measures.” The CDU politician points out, however, that up to two vaccinations per year against new virus mutants will also be needed in the future.
Boris Palmer runs hot with Markus Lanz (ZDF).
Lanz would like to know how you want to control the whole thing: “Either you do spot checks in the population like in Austria,” says Palmer, who got really hot. “Or you can access the residents’ register.” Everyone should be written to: “We now have a vaccination requirement, in four weeks I need your vaccination certificate.” Anyone who does not comply with this must expect a juicy procedure. “The city of Tübingen with 90,000 inhabitants regulates 140,000 traffic violations in this way. If we add another 5,000, I don’t even need to hire new staff,” he calculates.
Political scientist and journalist Corinna Milborn, from Vienna, where 300,000 PCR self-tests are carried out every day alone (the cost is only six euros per test compared to 52 euros in Germany!), confirms this not exactly squeamish procedure: “Who from the beginning of February boycotted compulsory vaccination in Austria, lives on the edge of illegality. But our government hopes that it will not come to that.” Palmer, who sees himself more conservative than the CDU in this case, wants to make the decision easier for those who are undecided with a vaccination requirement: “This fulfillment of duty must now be clearly written into law. Then we will get out of the pandemic.”
ZDF Talk Markus Lanz
The talk from January 25, 2022 in the media library.
Markus Lanz (ZDF): Hendrik Streeck doubts Boris Palmer’s beautiful new vaccination world
Brave new vaccine world?! At least Streeck doubts that: “We are now vaccinating against a variant that practically no longer exists,” he rightly objects. Therefore, three steps are important for him: Vaccination and convalescent status should be equal. You also have to accept antibodies as proof of the recovered status. And – last but not least – he advocates a study that proves how many people are actually protected from being infected with the corona virus.
Finally, Lanz asks him how often you have to expose yourself to a vaccination to really be immune to Covid-19. Streeck honestly admits: “We don’t know. We have not yet penetrated into these depths of immunology.” Aha, not even after more than two years. So nothing new in the West – and neither with Markus Lanz. (Marc Hairapetian)
