Five years ago, on March 16, 2020, Germany initiated a nationwide lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools, kindergartens, and non-essential businesses were shut down.
The impacts of these measures continue to spark debates today. According to a survey by YouGov, 56% of Germans believe the lockdown was the right move. Meanwhile, 20% of respondents consider the restrictions entirely wrong, and 19% think they were mostly wrong.
The survey also highlights that half of the population found the lockdown to be very burdensome, with 18% completely disagreeing and 29% expressing mild opposition to this view.
Earlier, the government of former Chancellor Angela Merkel came under criticism for not revealing intelligence that suggested the COVID-19 virus might have originated in a laboratory. According to reports from Süddeutsche Zeitung and Zeit, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) informed German authorities as early as 2020 that there was an 80-95% likelihood the pandemic stemmed from a virus leak at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
