Why I’m throwing the Corona-Warn-App off my cell phone – and you should do it too

It was my faithful companion for two years: the Corona-Warn-App. But now the app is flying off my phone. There are no technical reasons, something else is giving me stomach ache.

A commentary by Kaan Gürayer.

The corona virus is particularly dangerous in Germany

The coffee filter, the X-ray machine and of course the car: the inventiveness of the Germans is legendary, as a look at history shows. In the recent past, however, things have looked rather meager with world-class German inventions – with the exception of one: the national virus.

You don’t know the national virus? That is a particularly dangerous variant of the corona virus that only exists in Germany and therefore requires strict protective measures.

While our neighbors in France, Denmark, Switzerland and other European countries have long since returned to normal, Germany is preparing the draft of the new Infection Protection Act (IfSG) permanently remain the wrong-way driver in Europe. It has been known since the beginning of the pandemic that Karl Lauterbach, Minister of Health responsible for the draft, cannot switch off the panic mode.

What is new, however, is how easy it is Minister of Justice Buschmann (FDP) fell over and Lauterbach largely switch and rule. But maybe a few cheap shots against the 9-euro ticket are more important to the liberals than basic liberal values.

Lauterbach announces colored vaccination certificates in the Corona warning app

The IfSG draft is peppered with all sorts of questionable rules and regulations. The biggest of them: Vaccinated people who were vaccinated no more than 3 months ago should be exempted from any obligation to wear a mask indoors. Lauterbach does not accept that something like this can hardly be checked in practice, for example when visiting restaurants or cultural and sporting events. Finally, the SPD politician has a solution to the problem ready: colored vaccination certificates (Source: Berlin newspaper).

“Here, for example, it is provided that you can immediately see on the Corona-Warn-App from the color of the vaccination certificate whether it is a fresh vaccination or not,” says Lauterbach.

These apps should not be missing on any mobile phone:

Corona warning app becomes a tool for dividing society

And here I am out.

Colored vaccination certificates that give the vaccinated more or fewer privileges depending on the colour, sounds a bit too much like authoritarian states like China to me personally. The ARD program “Weltspiegel” recently shed light on where this is leading (source: daily News). In the People’s Republic, the local “health app” is also used to harass and arrest people you don’t like. In many Chinese cities, nothing works without the right color in the app.

So the Corona warning app flies off my cell phone. Not because it is technically bad – I have always defended the Corona-Warn-App against its critics – but because it is foreseeably becoming a tool that divides society. I’m not going to do that, and neither should you.