Germany’s messy, hesitant approach to COVID-19 should be no inspiration GlobeDebate
People gather on the Marienplatz to demonstrate against infection protection regulations and coronavirus social distancing rules, in Munich, Germany, on May 9, 2020.There is an age-old image of the German: precise, rule-following, clean, somewhat distant. Whatever we may have thought of those qualities before, in the age of COVID-19 they happen to be exactly what we want to see in our neighbours.
Which is half true – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s scientific background has indeed made her a great public health communicator. Germans are probably more prone to washing their hands than other Europeans, and their hospitals are good, despite being a complex mishmash of private and public systems. Germany does have more intensive-care beds and ventilators than most countries and it contact-traced cases from the beginning.
This should not be entirely surprising. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the defeat of one brutal German dictatorship, and the 30th of the end of another in the country’s east. There are any number of reasons why groups of Germans might be instinctively distrustful of higher authority.
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