Overview
- Appearing before the Thuringian Corona inquiry on November 11, Christian Drosten reflected on pandemic assumptions and outcomes.
- He said he was surprised by how little protection a single initial COVID-19 infection provided.
- Drosten explained that a let-it-spread strategy was not viable in Germany given high mortality among older people and the country’s age structure.
- He had expected faster population-level immunity in parts of the Global South, yet the virus kept returning in new waves for years.
- Addressing early response choices, he argued it would have been a mistake to wait for signs of hospital overload before imposing measures.