Alice
Weidel
Coronavirus
German Bundestag, March 4, 2020, Plenarprotokoll
19/148, pp. 18440-18441
[Alice Weidel is a chairman of the Alternative
für Deutschland delegation in the German Bundestag as well as AfD chairman in
the western German state of Baden-Württemberg. Charité is a large hospital in
Berlin. Jens Spahn is German Minister
for Health.]
Right
honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
The
situation is serious. Worldwide, the Coronavirus has seized 76 countries and
produced over 3,200 deaths. 93,000 are presently registered as infected.
Meanwhile, in Germany the number of confirmed infections has risen to 258.
No
one knows exactly how many people actually carry the virus and spread it
further. The leader of virology at Charité warns: Up to 70 percent of the
German population could be infected. Nevertheless, there is as of today no
well-designed Corona testing organization with clear lines of responsibility.
He who arrives from an at-risk area, and will allow himself to be tested, is
often sent from Pontius to Pilate – no one feels himself to be competent. This
chaos and this competence confusion are not a doom from out of the blue; it is
the consequence of a substantial political failure and amounts to a negligent
gamble with the lives and health of our citizens.
From
what we generally know, there is with this virus a higher danger of infection
and greater risk of fatality than with the common flu. A recognition which you,
Herr Spahn, were still disavowing on January 24. You said that the Corona
infection develops more mildly. That was not your only false statement. On January
27, you asserted that we are well prepared. You are still doing it.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): For you,
it has to be bad!
Four
weeks later, on February 26, you admitted: We find ourselves at the beginning
of a Corona epidemic. Nothing happened is these decisive weeks.
Andrew Ullmann (SPD): That is not
correct.
Christian Aschenberg-Dugnus (FDP): You certainly
know nothing about it!
You
are of the opinion that time must be gained for the necessary preventative
measures. In the past weeks, you should have long since accomplished that.
Instead of employing your own competence, you hide behind cost-benefit analyses
which are like water in a sieve for overcoming the crisis.
Claudia Roth (Greens – Augsburg): Mein Gott!
Even
now, there is presently no crisis center to plan for the securing of care by
preparing preventative supplies. This ought to have been done weeks ago.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Must you
make political capital out of everything?
Now
it comes home to the fact that, during your time in office, the last antibiotic
production facility in Germany had to be closed. The supply situation of the
corresponding medicines visibly worsens.
The
people’s unrest would doubtless be much less if this government could have made
a more competent and serious impression and if the citizens could have had
confidence that their government concerned itself with its core duties; in
fact, the defense of the citizen and crisis prevention, which you for weeks
have culpably neglected.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You have today
once again disqualified yourself!
Time
is short. Therefore the consequences of the changes and communications failures
are not to be retrieved. Instead of rhetorical pablum, substantial, immediate
measures are now required. We must comprehensively employ and ceaselessly
expand the available treatment capacities so as to arm them against a sudden
increase in the cases of illness. How many intensive care beds can be made
ready in the short term, how many isolation stations are available?
Karin Maag (CDU/CSU): We know that,
Frau Weidel. Only you don’t.
How
many will be required? That must be coordinated. We need comprehensive and
obligatory tests for persons at risk as well as for the people suffering from
the flu or a bad cold.
Andrew Ullmann (FDP): There are no
screening tests.
A
separate testing infrastructure is required, instead of leaving it to the
practicing doctors and the hospitals with their research and care-giving. To
expect that house doctors and primary care practitioners can render aid without
the necessary support borders on a negligent act of bodily harm.
The
urgently lacking preventative supplies for doctors and medical personnel should
be made ready. Otherwise, the failure last Sunday at Charité will be repeated,
in which an entire emergency room shift had to be put in quarantine after a
suspected case had tested strongly positive, and that after the patient had
been sent home. Also needed are temperature controls in the airports, as is
being done in China.
Sabine Dittmar (SPD): What a waste!
The
voluntarily completed questionnaires which the Federal government composes are,
unfortunately, ineffective. We require a systematic entry control at the border
which the Federal government unfortunately rejects. Austria can stop trains,
the Italians can put migrant ships in quarantine, but Germany leaves the
borders uncontrolled.
(Noise from the Greens: Ah!)
We
know you find that funny.
The
unresolved migration crisis is now dramatically intensifying. With particular
intensity, the virus rages in the Near and Middle East. And now Turkey puts an
estimated tens of thousands of migrants on the way to Europe.
Florian Post (SPD): Should we close
the borders?
Nevertheless,
the Federal government proclaims the dogma of open borders. This obstinacy
aggravates the danger of infection and can cost lives.
Anton Hofreiter (Greens): You must be happy that you
are allowed over the Swiss border!
The
usual lobbyists – Herr Hofreiter, you are screeching again – accordingly cry
for the controlled incorporation of all [alle
kontrolliert aufzunehmen]. That is not only naïve, that is hair-raisingly
irresponsible.
Kersten Steinke (Linke): That is
humane!
For
the especially endangered parts of the population, old people, people with
multiple illnesses, substantive protective measures must be taken. Also, they
must feel that they can and must contribute. Due to the striking neglect of the
timely identification of those persons unfortunately already infected, there
can now occur a sudden increase in the number of cases of illness.
Right
honorable ladies and gentlemen, this theme is very personal for me.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens):
Obviously.
We are
dealing with an authentic crisis. Naïve podcasts by the Chancellor, soothing
sermons, measured and moderate, or “We are well prepared” cannot talk that
away. Where is the strategy? I see none at all! Wake up! Please be
professional. Apply yourselves to the real problems, and conduct yourselves as
befits the interest of this country and its citizens! That is what you were
elected for and we stand ready to support you.
Many
thanks.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
