Some Covid restrictions were “idiocy” and lengthy school closures were an “unnecessary mistake”, Germany’s lockdown chief has admitted. The Telegraph has the story.
Karl Lauterbach, who became the face of the pro-lockdown movement, said some regulations went too far.
“Much of what we did was right, but what was idiocy was the things like jogging with masks, or rules for outdoors. Those were excessive,” Mr. Lauterbach said.
Mr. Lauterbach, of Olaf Scholz’s ruling Socialist party, also conceded that too little attention had been paid to the wellbeing of children, describing school closures as “a big mistake”.
Germany was praised for its handling of the pandemic by heavily restricting people’s contacts and closing schools and kindergarten for weeks on end.
Before Mr. Lauterbach was appointed health minister in late 2021, he became an influential advocate of strict lockdown measures as a backbencher.
Among his more controversial proposals was the suggestion made in 2020 to suspend regular schooling for at least a year.
“What was a mistake was the long school closures. That was unnecessary,” he told ZDF, the German broadcaster, on Friday.
As recently as April 2022, he was warning against lifting restrictions too quickly, saying that the country could be hit by a “killer variant”.
A trained doctor, Mr. Lauterbach gained a wide following among the German public, but critics warned that his predictions were alarmist.
More rowing back and half-hearted faux mea culpas from the lockdown zealots. If only someone had mentioned this at the time. No, wait, we did – but it was suppressed as ‘misinformation’.
Worth reading in full.