In spring 2020 the German Federal Ministry of the Interior produced two documents which together document the German application of the tabletop language-regulation architecture. Six years later the two papers meet again — as witness and as questioned, in the great hearing room of the German Bundestag, in the framework of the federal inquiry commission “Aufarbeitung der COVID-19-Pandemie.” What happens there is not accountability. It is a second application of the same mechanism.
On 8 December 2020 the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina published its 7th Ad-hoc Statement on the coronavirus pandemic, titled “Using the Holidays and the Turn of the Year for a Hard Lockdown.” It demanded, in concrete terms: suspension of compulsory schooling from 14 December 2020, closure of all shops not serving basic supply needs from 24 December, reduction of social contacts to “a very narrowly limited circle,” home office as the rule, suspension of group activities in sport and culture.
March 14, 2020 — the day a government agency lied to its citizens and was never held accountable.
Exactly six years ago today, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) published a tweet that would go down in history — though not in the way the ministry had intended.
