Virus pest and German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has announced that most remaining coronavirus measures will end on March 1st, one month and seven days before they were scheduled to expire. This follows his rough treatment on the nationwide talkshow Markus Lanz last week. Lauterbach spent most of his pandemic as a chronic guest on Lanz and similar venues, where his every opinion was treated as an oracular pronouncement straight from Delphi. Lanz and his guests have made it clear that all of that is over with now. For 30 minutes, they harangued Lauterbach for his virus hysteria, for his imprudent tweets, for his failed predictions and for the few remaining pandemic restrictions upheld by his office. As Lauterbach struggled to defend himself, Lanz played an old clip of Anders Tegnell from 2020, in which the Swedish state epidemiologist bemoaned the coming economic and educational harms of lockdowns.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the pendulum is swinging the other way in Germany now. Our press are certainly doing their level best to lend the impression that we’re in the midst of a wholesale reappraisal of our pandemic policies. Creepy Lauterbach fangirl Christina Berndt has even published a defensive wall-of-text in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Like all our other Science Gurus, Berndt has been relentlessly, consistently, embarrassingly wrong about everything, which means she’d prefer that nobody be called to account for all the stupid stuff they’ve spent the past three years doing and saying.
Read more: Don’t Be Fooled by the Faux Apologies From the Lockdown Fanatics