What makes you assume this is in response to the pandemic?
We've been murdering Black people in the US for years and years and years. The usual response is "Well, you gotta understand. Policing is hard and it's a judgement call and it's unfortunate that so man Blacks end up dead after the cops get hold of them, but ...blah blah blah."
And then a Black guy was murdered during the pandemic and suddenly people care.
I don't care how many years of planning went into it. They would still be batting it about and talking about it but not acting if we didn't have a pandemic where a third of Americans are failing to pay their rent and presumably similar shit is happening in Germany.
Edit: The PC term for it is "political will." It's easier to get a deal like this if you have a huge and obvious disaster ongoing to help justify it.
Your fifty-five years of studying how people work didn't extend to anywhere outside the US then.
I'll leave you to it. Have a pleasant day.
Dismissive snark isn't really how you are supposed to be commenting on HN, no matter how much you may think I sound like a loon.
When times are, relatively, good there isn't civil unrest enough for governments to propose anything particularly novel.
People want more of the same if they're "comfortable enough" and politics is in direct reaction to that.
When things are mostly working, people don't want you to break stuff. When things are clearly not working, you can get agreement to try "the crazy thing."