The debate about an alleged “contamination plan” in schools has escalated. After a violent shit storm, Karin Prien, head of the Conference of Ministers of Education, deactivated her Twitter account.
Two hashtags have dominated the heated public debate about how to deal with the corona pandemic in schools in the past few days: #Wir Werdenlaut, under which representatives of schoolchildren defend themselves against an alleged “contagion tactic” by politicians in schools. And #Prienruecktritt, with which the current President of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Karin Prien (CDU), was asked to resign. The 56-year-old was recently subjected to violent verbal attacks and deactivated her Twitter account after days of shitstorm.
What happened? With her last week, the CDU politician had already upset opponents of a far-reaching opening of schools. The public dispute culminated in the response to a reproachful and desperate tweet from a user. She had written: “We have had 17 dead children in the last 4 weeks. 17 – in FOUR weeks. And it’s getting faster and faster. By October 21 we had 27 dead children, since October 38. So in 4.5 months more than in 18 months. A total of 65 children have died. SIXTY-FIVE”. Prien then wrote: “Please differentiate: children die. That is extremely tragic. But they die with Covid_19 and only extremely rarely because of Covid_19.”
Karin Prien: I experienced “a different culture”.
Prien was then accused of a lack of empathy and even a misanthropic attitude, which was “grotesque” in view of her Jewish ancestors, according to one of the drastic tweets. For parents, it doesn’t matter whether their child dies with or from Corona after an infection at school. Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of Education was accused of this differentiation in line with the arguments of lateral thinkers. Many of the reactions were irrelevant and insulting, whereupon Prien took action and deactivated her Twitter account. A “real low point” has been reached in the discussion.
Through her spokesman she had a statement released in which she justified her withdrawal from Twitter: “I’ll take a few weeks to think about whether and how I’ll continue to use Twitter as a medium for communication,” it says. During her numerous appointments, she experienced a “different culture” of debate. “Also critical and with different ideas about the right solutions, but civilized and with respect in dealing with and interested in good solutions,” said the head of the Conference of Ministers of Education.
Get out of the “culture of fear” in schools
Prien has been criticized as a clear advocate of a gradual opening of schools. She opposes a “culture of fear” in the schools, which is based on the Corona measures. When it opens from mid-February or early March, schools must also be relaxed. “Sports and music lessons must take place again in full. The testing must end gradually. Two tests per week will probably be enough by the end of March at the latest,” she told the “Bild” newspaper last Saturday. The obligation to test must gradually become a “test option”. The mask requirement must also gradually fall, first in the classroom on the square, then in the building. According to Prien, the peak of the omicron wave has already been passed, at least in the northern federal states. Fortunately, this is also reflected in the lower number of infections among 5 to 18 year olds.
But for the German Teachers’ Association, the current situation is not so clear. The omicron wave still has school operations firmly under control. The number of infections should not be increased again by loosening the restrictions too early, thereby jeopardizing the nationwide face-to-face teaching again, said Association President Heinz-Peter Meidinger of the German Press Agency (DPA). The student representatives, who went public with their open letter of complaint and the Internet campaign under the hashtag #WirWerdenLaut, even accuse the politicians of a deliberate “contamination plan”. They speak out against compulsory attendance and call for smaller learning groups, PCR pool tests and air filters in all schools. In the case of “Markus Lanz”, one of the co-organizers of the petition, Johanna Börgermann, also reported on the pressure to vaccinate and bullying of non-vaccinated students, on fear of the consequences of positive test results and also the fear of infection. “That may be irrational [angesichts eines geringen Risikos einer schweren Erkrankung, Anm. d. Red.]but the fear is there,” said Börgermann. She criticized that this was hardly taken into account in the entire debate.
Eckerle: “Children should generally not die of Covid-19”
Without referring directly to Prien’s statement that corona deaths in children must be considered “differentiated”, virologist Isabella Eckerle, head of the Center for Novel Viral Infections at the University of Geneva, said, “Children should generally not die of Covid-19, even if deaths are only a small percentage of the total”. Unfortunately, it can be assumed that “even rare complications will continue to increase”. Increasing easing, a weak vaccination recommendation and vaccination rates that are too low for under 12-year-olds could contribute to this – especially since the infection rates in the young age groups are high. It should be noted that other complications in children caused by a corona infection, such as the PIMS inflammatory syndrome or long covid, must also be taken seriously – “precisely because not all aspects of this have yet been scientifically understood,” says Eckerle.
With material from DPA
Source: Stern
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