This is a particularly annoying and stupid example of a German tabloid attacking @c_drosten for “constantly changing his mind”. And I just want to point out two things here:
1. Science is (ideally) a process of slowly gaining reliable knowledge about the world. As such scientists are always “changing their minds” (I would actually say they are more often too slow in doing that than too fast)
It is not a virtue to stick to old ideas when the evidence changes. Even though a certain type of political journalist has made it their shtick to basically look at anything that happens in the world through the fogged up lens of their encrusted priors.
In a fast moving pandemic with a novel virus that was only discovered four months ago you’d better be willing to change your mind every now and then.
2. With Angela Merkel we have a politician and former scientist as chancellor who understands that process well and frequently explains it. So the conflict presented here does not even exist (it does exist elsewhere).
The only conflict that exists here is between journalists looking for a pre-conceived conflict and the reality that it does not exist the way they would like it to.
The irony is, of course, that some journalists constantly leave out scientists’ caveats when communicating new findings, thus building up a straw man they can later attack.
