The RKI minutes were published unedited yesterday. /Screenshot DÄ
Berlin – The almost 4,000-page protocols of the corona crisis team at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) were published yesterday without redaction. A first glance shows: They are snapshots that reflect the confusing situation during the pandemic, with constantly changing situations and which leave a lot of room for interpretation.
This is also due to the style of the protocol with a series of very brief formulations and some linguistic errors: the context and references of some statements are often not clearly understandable to outsiders.
The documents from 2020 to 2023 do not contain any kind of conclusion or analysis of the pandemic period. However, it is clear that the RKI probably had to fight against political influence or similar attempts at some points.
With the protocols, the complexity of what is happening becomes public, said medical statistician Gerd Antes in an article daily News.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) wrote in a post on the Agora platform that this is happening without prior protection of the rights of third parties, including employees. “There is still nothing to hide,” he emphasized.
How the minutes became public
Some of the minutes had already been published a few months ago on the online blog Multipolar According to his own statements, he had fought for the release of the documents in court. German medical journal reported.
At the end of May, the RKI itself finally released the documents from January 2020 to April 2021 to the public, but they still contained redacted areas. The RKI referred to the protection of personal data as well as commercial and corporate secrets of third parties.
The full protocols and additional materials were made available for download yesterday by freelance journalist Aya Velázquez on the website rki-transparenzbericht.de. Regarding the origin of the material, she wrote on the X portal (formerly Twitter): “A whistleblower, a former employee of the Robert Koch Institute, approached me and handed me the dataset.”
Velázquez held a press conference with, among others, Stefan Homburg, retired professor of public finance at Leibniz University Hannover, which has sparked debates several times during the corona pandemic.
Criticism of the expression “pandemic of the unvaccinated”
Criticism of the term “pandemic of the unvaccinated” contained in the minutes (meeting on November 5, 2021) generated much discussion on social media.
He says that this is being talked about in the media. “It is not correct from a technical point of view, the entire population contributes. Should this be taken into account in the communication?” And further: “The minister says this at every press conference, probably consciously, and it cannot be corrected.” At that time, Jens Spahn (CDU) was still Federal Minister of Health.
Shortly after, the protocol also states: “It would not normally be a problem if people were infected mildly or asymptomatically. The high number of unvaccinated people is the problem.”
Virologist Martin Stuermer to be featured in article tagesschau.de quoted as saying: “The phrase ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ is a bit of an exaggeration because it suggests that only unvaccinated people are infected.”
This is not true. “Vaccinated people have been infected repeatedly. Of course not to the same extent as unvaccinated people, but it has clearly given the wrong impression that unvaccinated people are the absolute drivers of the pandemic.”
Those who were infected at the time and, above all, became seriously ill were mostly unvaccinated, Sturmer says. The report also points out that the new Delta variant emerged around this time.
Criticism of the term “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is by no means new; it was already raised publicly back then; virologist Christian Drosten from the Berlin Charité, among others, said in an interview in November 2021: “There is a narrative at the moment that I think is completely wrong: the pandemic of the unvaccinated. We do not have a pandemic of the unvaccinated, we have a pandemic. And we have people who are still very much at risk, the unvaccinated older people.”
Of ministerial instructions and reservations
Some other passages raise questions about the independence of the RKI’s decisions, especially when it comes to the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), to whose subordinate division the RKI belongs.
In September 2021, an RKI official is quoted as having made statements regarding a ministerial directive prior to the publication of an update to a document on contact tracing management: “This included taking AG tests into account for free testing even after 5 days.”
The new section is causing irritation among the states, the minutes say. And further: “This influence by BMG on the RKI documents is unusual. […] The RKI’s scientific independence from politics is therefore limited.”
Elsewhere it says: “The RKI’s ideas should be incorporated more intensively, which is not so easy, the BKAmt asks directly (editor’s note: Federal Chancellery), but the RKI has to respond with reservations from the BMG.”
At the beginning of 2021, a concept for containment measures was registered: “The step-by-step plan should be published in coordination with the BMG, but the division into stages should be based on evidence (through studies, etc.).”
However, records from December 13, 2021, shortly after Lauterbach took office as Federal Minister of Health, on the subject of the Federal Government’s Corona Expert Council indicate an acceptance of different positions: “The Minister sees no problem if there is no agreement between the RKI and the Expert Council, scientific discussion with contentious disputes is possible”.
Daily activities of the crisis team
The protocols deal in detail with data and situations on various topics related to the pandemic, on which the RKI has also provided public information: such as the development of the number of cases, current outbreaks, testing capacity and deaths, availability of vaccines, study results, international developments and containment measures.
Messages that should be communicated to the outside world were also agreed upon. These are also agreements between the RKI and other institutions such as the Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA). And a number of gaps in knowledge are discussed and questions are raised.
In some places it becomes explicitly clear that these considerations are not conclusive and self-explanatory. A passage from spring 2020 on the question of opening daycare centers and schools is supplemented with the following words: “For a publishable statement, further work would be needed to ensure that all existing publications are taken into account.”
Initial skepticism about the Astrazeneca vaccine
Internally, the RKI states in a protocol from early January 2021 that the Astrazeneca vaccine “is not a surefire success” like other vaccines because it is “less perfect”. “The use needs to be discussed.”
In early February 2021, the matter was recorded, but BMG’s communication “should be a little slower, as there are certainly some differences with this vaccine”. It is not explained in more detail which differences are referred to.
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Spahn himself was vaccinated with Astrazeneca in May 2021, and from the beginning of April 2021 only this vaccine was offered to RKI employees, as can be seen from the protocols.
RKI: Did not check or verify datasets
The RKI announced yesterday that it had neither checked nor verified the datasets now published. “Insofar as personal data and commercial and company secrets of third parties are unlawfully published in these datasets and, in particular, the rights of third parties are violated, the RKI expressly disapproves of this.” © ggr/aerzteblatt.de