This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Culture war in Germany: former COVID-era minister of health Jens Spahn has finally resigned as the leader of the parliamentary group of the conservative CDU/CSU.
Spahn (born 1980) got elected to the Bundestag in 2002 and served as a backbencher. He came out as gay in 2012, some 11 years after Wowereit had firmly established that gay politicians were a thing in Germany.
Under Merkel IV, he became minister of health. I surmise the reasoning was that he was a loyal party member and the health ministry was not particularly important, so the damage he could do there was limited.
Then, COVID hit, and health policy became kinda important. Oops.
I will credit that he was no RFK Jr, but mostly did what the experts recommended (whatever you think of that), apart from having meetings with donors when he had just warned against gatherings (like many other politicians did).
But he certainly saw an opportunity for grift and took it. This was the so-called Maskenaffäre. In the summer of 2020, it became increasingly clear that COVID-19 was airborne and particle filter masks (US: N95, EU: FFP2) would offer some protection. This lead to a dearth of protective masks in Europe. So Spahn funneled money taxpayer money to entrepreneurs with close ties to the CDU/CSU to procure such masks.
Now, it was obviously reasonably for the ministry of health to acquire some face masks even at inflated prices common for medical equipment -- at least for people working in hospitals, but he overestimated the amount required by orders of magnitude. Per WP, he bought 5.8 billion masks for an average price of about an Euro per mask. That is 70 masks per person in Germany, most of which were later destroyed when they expired.
As someone very willing to wear masks when recommended (at least until I got multiple doses of the vaccine), I estimate I went through perhaps 10 or 15 masks in total. While there was a supply shortage at a time, it only lasted a few months before Chinese masks flooded the market. The average price I paid in retail was certainly less than a Euro.
The Maskenaffäre cemented the image of the CDU/CSU as a hive of grifters, but despite them losing a few regional elections, it did not lead to Spahn getting driven out of politics. He did lose his ministry to Karl Lauterbach (SPD, physician, COVID hawk) and did not manage to become the heir of Merkel.
In 2025, he became the leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, which is probably not in the top 5 jobs in political Berlin but likely in the top 20.
That is all just background info, not while he was now resigning.
The CDU/CSU has always been a force of social conservatism. Merz famously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997. The CDU was not the only party to represent the interests of the industry (the FDP also existed), but it was (for a long time) the main party to vote for if you did not like LGBT rights.
It is thanks to Spahn's CDU/CSU that surrogate pregnancy remains illegal in Germany today. So while Spahn and his husband did not break any German laws when they contracted with a surrogate mother in the US to get a baby, it was generally taken as a defection from the values endorsed by the CDU/CSU and Spahn personally.
Another casualty of Spahn's retreat is the satire news website der Postillon, which in the past years published dozens of articles on Jens Spahn based on his mask procurement which depicted him as both clueless and corrupt. Semiconductor crisis over: Spahn buys chips for more than 3 billion euros was a rather representative example. After he resigned, over 700 employees specializing in such articles reportedly did lose their livelihood.
To be fair, as far as I know this may have even been on the lower end of necessity. FFP2 and N95 masks were always supposed to be one-use, for maybe 4 to 8 hours of continuous usage, the filter stops being functional as it gets dirty. After that, the mask becomes just a dirty rag without any filtration functionality, as well as a health risk with bacteria and mold making breathing through them hazardous. Of course the reality had nothing to do with medical advice, people used the same mask for months often having it somewhere in a car or dirty jacket pocket to use while shopping or whatnot. All in all, it probably caused more damage than good.
I would frame it like this: for a single use FFP2 mask, the manufacturer has tested that the mask will last a shift. So from a purely technical compliance point, you are correct.
However, this is similar to the claim that you need to exchange the oil in your ICE every six months or 8k kilometers, whatever comes first. Sure, it is what the car manufacturer recommends, and if your car is part of some life-critical infrastructure (e.g. a patrol car), it might be easiest to do this rather than trying to justify deviating from it. But a lot of people get decent mileage out of older cars despite replacing the oil much rarer than recommended.
The general public was never trained to wear FFP2 masks the way professionals (like people working with asbestos) hopefully are. Realistically, a huge fraction of the public was not getting the full benefit of 95% particle filtering due to imperfect use.
In the "flatten the curve" era, the idea was not that we could eradicate COVID-19 by making sure that everyone inhaled less than 5% of particles in public. Instead, the idea was "particle filter masks likely offer some marginal benefit over medical masks or textile masks even if worn imperfectly, we might as well try to benefit from that".
Basically, we are in the realm of cost-benefit analysis, not strict compliance. I can not say I was really surprised by this study claiming that some masks remain very effective even after forty hours of use (though I did not anticipate that they would even survive washing that well). I am sure that there were employees in the ministry of health who shared my instinct that most of the exposure would come from ill-fitted masks and a lack of compliance in the population, with overlong reuse being a distant third. The average citizen likely wore his mask to the supermarket, so during an acute shortage, you might want to order two for him, which should offer some protection over two months, and once they arrive you can reassess the market situation.
Add to that some basic economic literacy. The CDU donors obviously did not produce their FFP2 masks in their own factories, they procured them from China, same as everyone. If China is shipping masks they will have masks to sell to the taxpayer at some hefty markup, but this also means that other people will also be selling Chinese masks. And if China is not shipping masks, then they will not have masks to sell at any price either. CDU donors are not the Spacing Guild, they do not have a monopoly on transportation.
If Spahn had ordered enough masks to cover hospital shifts for a few months from 3M or some other medical or PPE company even at a hefty markup, nobody would have cared much. Instead, he ordered colossal quantities from his grifter friends.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link