“Compulsory vaccination means compulsory debate!”

An appointment with the Federal President about mandatory vaccination. Anyone who hoped that Frank-Walter Steinmeier would burn their own fingers on the hot iron was – as expected – disappointed. Right at the beginning he made it clear: “As Federal President, I will not position myself in this round to say yes or no to a general vaccination requirement.”

That already requires “respect for the political process” towards a law that he himself will have to examine and possibly sign. Even if a Federal President, Steinmeier continues, does not write any laws, he “has the task, and I believe: also the duty, to call for the public discussion of serious issues.”

That is exactly what he wants today: debate. “There is no democracy without debate. And even in times of crisis there is no democracy without debate. “

Covid was always a topic at Bellevue

The conversation with citizens and experts at Bellevue Palace has a long tradition, Steinmeier not only continued it in a wide variety of formats, but also strengthened it: He spoke to mayors about threats to which they are increasingly exposed, with Black Germans about what racism does to people as an everyday experience.

The experience with Covid was also often an issue – in discussions with those who have recovered and those who continue to suffer, with parents and nurses. And many professionals. So this time too.

And as always in the rounds at Bellevue, there was something to be learned. Kai Nagel, professor at the TU Berlin, a natural traffic system planner who has been developing mobility models for the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the TU since 2020, informed Steinmeier about the role of such modeling: “We had waves that were from look the same on the outside, but were different. ” The delta variant is a good example:

In Saxony, when Delta determined the infections, the vaccination rate was significantly 15 percent lower than in North Rhine-Westphalia. “Now we have ten times more deaths from Covid-19 in Saxony, before that there was a significant burden on hospitals.”

Understanding of the youngsters’ worries

Nagel warned that when it came to vaccination and compulsory vaccination, a distinction should be made between an individual and a social perspective: “I can understand when younger people consider the risk of vaccination to be less acceptable than that of infection.”

The other side is the social one: “If I allow infection, then there may be chains within which there are severe courses and which place a heavy burden on the hospital system. I can prevent that with a vaccination.” It is “a bit like bringing your car to the TÜV.”

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Cornelia Betsch, who is professor of health communication at the University of Erfurt, spoke about the field of the unvaccinated that she has been observing and researching since the beginning of the pandemic: Around 60 to 70 of the unvaccinated said that they are definitely not ready to be vaccinated. That is of course a problem.

And when it comes to compulsory vaccination, it is also important to see what is meant and where and how it can be enforced. “There are many ways to get people to vaccinate.” For example, more education is needed.

Information from the supermarket rather than the state?

So far, it has “tended to run through books that were available at the supermarket checkout and that were above all vaccine-critical”. And more organization is needed, the health system needs changes. “Nobody in Denmark had to rummage through the Internet, people got invitations with their own appointment.”

However, according to Betsch, she knows from her research and that of her colleagues: Many are simply afraid of vaccination. That makes the debate “hot” and emotional and the space narrow for “pros and cons”.

The following debate with his guests who were critical of the vaccination – the assistant to the management of a medium-sized company near Bamberg and a teacher from Kirchtellinsfurt in Baden-Württemberg – sometimes even pushed the host Steinmeier, who is usually a confident moderator, to the limits of his abilities: Gudrun Gessert and Oliver Foeth spoke of unproven Vaccines, individual responsibility and inadequate protection through vaccination.

The guests from practice and science countered this: Sigrid Chongo, head of a senior citizens’ facility in Berlin, spoke of her relief since the residents could be protected by vaccination – after the devastating experiences of the first wave in 2020. Cornelia Betsch took Gessert’s argument apart that thousands of reports of vaccine damage have already accumulated.

The fact that every suspicion can be reported to the responsible EU authority “is a very low hurdle”. The decisive factor is whether the suspicion later turns out to be correct after examination.

Corona dictatorship? “An insult to all of us”

No opinion of your own, at least not in public? Anyone who had listened carefully to Steinmeier’s speech could even get the impression that he was stepping out of the presidential cover: “Incisive” and “far-reaching” would be a compulsory vaccination, the Federal President said in his welcoming speech, and: Precisely because of this, “we have to.” make particularly high demands on their justification. And all the more so because a compulsory vaccination has been explicitly excluded for a long time by those responsible in the federal and state governments. ”

And followed by a warning to everyone who is responsible for government: He calls on all of you, governments and parliaments, “to discuss with the citizens who would actually be affected by such a far-reaching measure “.

Once again, the Federal President opposed the unconventional thinker story – he had recently, more emotionally than usual, turned to vaccine skeptics (“What still has to happen to convince you?”). There are people in the country who said: “We have a” Corona dictatorship “in Germany. That is malicious nonsense!” This not only expresses “contempt for our democratic and constitutional institutions.” off, but that offends “all of us”.

“We are fighting our way through this pandemic month after month, but not because we are guided and controlled with an iron hand, but because the great majority struggle again and again to do the right thing, to act responsibly, to show solidarity.