Pandemic as a business model: Community of values ​​or administrative circus?

It's a fascinating spectacle: While Europe's political class is still wagging its finger at its own moral self-congratulation, Donald Trump marches onto the stage and pulls back the curtain. Behind it, there's no grand magic, just an administrative circus of self-deception, excuses, and ritualized failure. Whether you like Trump or not is about as relevant as the seating arrangements on the sinking of the Titanic. What matters is that someone has the courage to turn off the music.

In Davos, this high mass of global self-affirmation, Trump delivered a stinging critique of the European elites. Not because it was loud, but because it was stark. Energy policy: a self-imposed blackout. Migration: morally charged, practically chaotic. Bureaucracy: hypertrophic self-serving. The state: paralyzed by fear of offending someone. While Europe explains why something unfortunately can't be done, Trump explains why he's doing it anyway. That's the real affront.

Meanwhile, the really interesting things are happening, as always, not on the big stage, but in the shadows of high-security fences. For example, in Spiez. A BSL-4 laboratory under WHO auspices, diplomatically shielded, practically uncontrollable. Gain-of-function research on Swiss soil, flanked by arms and pharmaceutical facilities in the immediate vicinity. Transparency towards the public? Non-existent. Control? Theoretically planned, practically outsourced. Responsibility? As diffuse as fog over Lake Thun.

While Trump bans gain-of-function research in the US and cuts off funding to the WHO, a logistical haven is emerging in Europe for precisely the kind of research that is politically undesirable elsewhere. Coincidence, of course. Pure coincidence that third-party funding, diplomatic immunity, and international organizations are forming a perfect symbiosis here. It's like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, only this time with security clearance four and a press spokesperson.

The line of reasoning is always the same: Everything serves protection. Everything serves prevention. Everything is without alternative. And because it's so complex, nobody is supposed to look too closely. Anyone who asks questions disrupts the workplace harmony. Anyone who demands transparency supposedly endangers safety. Anyone who calls for oversight is considered naive. It's a remarkably elegant system: Maximum power with minimal accountability.

Things get particularly interesting when you look at the promises of returns circulating around pandemics. Double-digit returns on investment. Pandemics as a calculable business model. Anyone who still believes in pure humanitarianism here should perhaps also believe in Santa Claus. If pandemics become predictable, it's not because nature is so predictable, but because someone believes they can make it predictable.

And this is precisely the crux of the problem: Gain-of-function is not a neutral science. It is always offensively oriented. Biological weapons are not defensive instruments. They are not aimed at tanks, but at societies. Their most insidious characteristic is not their power, but their delay. Slow onset, delayed symptoms, diffuse causality. Perfectly suited to diluting responsibility and making criticism disappear into the fog of statistics.

The past few years have shown how well this game works. Fear replaces debate. Morality replaces analysis. Measures replace responsibility. And those who don't comply pay. In Switzerland, there is now open discussion about hefty fines for refusing vaccination. It's not arguments that are meant to convince, but money. Blackmail as a health strategy. Elegant, efficient, authoritarian.

What Trump is inadvertently revealing here is not his own greatness or smallness, but the weakness of Europe. A continent that presents itself as a community of values, yet outsources critical infrastructure to international organizations that regulate themselves. A political class that prefers to talk about narratives rather than responsibilities. A system that demands trust but refuses transparency.

The letters to Trump, Kennedy, and the Federal Council have been received. They raise questions that should be self-evident: Who bears responsibility? Who oversees? Who decides? The fact that these questions are considered provocative says more about the state of political culture than any Sunday speech in Davos.

You don't have to celebrate Trump to recognize what's happening here. He's not a messiah, but a catalyst. Someone who's draining the oxygen from the room where Europe's power structures have spent years patting themselves on the back. The truth knows no mercy. It's not interested in sensitivities, labels, or moral self-descriptions.

The world is reorganizing itself. Not because anyone wants it, but because the old structures have lost their credibility. Anyone who still invests energy in outrage instead of putting their own house in order will be overtaken by reality. Not with applause. But with consequences.

Pandemic as a business model: Community of values ​​or administrative circus?