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Politics

Why I want mandatory vaccinations

Why does Germany needs an impfplicht? Because I feel sorry for anti-vaxxers

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Okay, so first up, I love the vaccine: I fucking love it. I’m kinda addicted. I literally, you know, can’t get enough. An anti-vax friend made a joke about me being a junkie and I didn’t even think to be offended – I wish I could get syringed up with that juicy mRNA goodness on a daily basis. I’ve had two lots of BioNTech and one lot of Moderna – and to be honest, I feel sad I never got AZ or J&J too.

I love the vaccine.

I want the vaccine.

I need the vaccine.

I ADORE the vaccine.

Look, I just wanna survive this shit show.

You know what else I love? Drosten and Lauterbach. I spent 2020 obsessing over Dr D – he wasn’t panicking enough for my liking – and this year, it’s Lautie. I feel about Lautie like he’s my favourite tired prostitute – sorry, I mean sex worker – in the Puff and I’m a greedy, lazy, horny, exploitative pimp – whenever I put on German telly and he isn’t on I feel beleidigt and whisper to him, in my head, in a raspy, hungry voice: “Wake up, baby, Daddy’s got work for you to do, here’s Anne Will, there’s your mic. Come on, one last show. I’ll tell you when you can sleep. You ain’t that tired honey. Come on, baby. Get out of bed.”

So I guess you could say I’m on the pro-vaccine, pro-science side of this great Impfgegner versus Geimpfte cultural war Germany suddenly finds itself in. 

And yet, I feel sorry for unvaxxed people. I feel like we’re pretty quick to forget that not every unvaccinated person is a passionate anti-vaxxer – some of them are just a bit useless. And some of them really are genuinely scared too. And while I, of course, recognise and respect the anger people must feel about this – like imagine if you had a kid who literally might die of cancer because operations are being postponed or even cancelled due to Jana from Friedrichshagen wanting to wait for Sputnik – I’d feel murderous with rage, I know that – but I also feel like it’s pretty convenient for the German government, us turning on each other like this?

I know a lot of unvaxxed teens by the way. My son didn’t get into the “best” Gymnasium in the world, and maybe that’s why he has a lot of unvaxxed friends. My friends whose kids go to Gymnasien in Prenzlauer Berg or Charlottenburg tell me their kids’ classmates are 100% vaxxed up. It’s not like that at Ryan’s school. It’s not that the kids are poor, but there are more ethnic minority kids, and most are pretty working class. As well as distrusting the medical authorities, fearing being made infertile (which seems to be a paranoid fantasy in the black and Asian community in the UK, too, so as frustrating as this is, I think we’re going to have to blame racism for this one?), there just also isn’t much incentive, right? If you’re one kid in a family of six, and money’s tight, there isn’t much going on in your life you need to get an Impfpass for – no restaurant visits, or judo clubs to give up. So getting vaxxed isn’t going to be on the top of your priority list. 

Jacinta, I hear you cry, what about Eigenverantwortung? What about Solidarität?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look I hate to break it to you. But people are shit. Rich people are shit, poor people are shit, middle class people are shit, working class people are shit.

People are selfish. People just want to survive. 

I wasn’t solidarisch enough to wait until every single granny in Germany had been vaxxed before getting my booster – and other people aren’t solidarisch enough to go and get themselves vaxxed to stop spreading this illness.

Politicians want us blaming each other because they don’t want us blaming them for the mess we are in. 

German people keep on comparing the Impfquote over here with other countries, making it out like our low vaccination rates are some kind of individual failure on a mass scale. But they forget to mention, that in a lot of other countries, like Portugal, for example, people got given an appointment by the authorities, which all they had to do was turn up for.

I firmly believe that if we had we organised things this way, we could have totally avoided mandatory vaccinations.

Unfortunately, though, I don’t think we can now: we need an Impfpflicht.

But the truth is, it’s because I DON’T hate unvaccinated people that I want an Impfpflicht:

It will make it easier for genuinely scared people to “make up their minds”

AND it will stop them from dying.

And Omicron is no reason to avoid getting your booster either: some scientists say (yes, when I say some scientists I mean Karl Lauterbach) the vaccine still works on it, protecting you up to 90% from serious developments, and to be honest, even if it doesn’t, we still have plenty of Delta to go round too. And as far as I’m concerned, an imperfect vaccine is better than none at all.

So here I am, desperately trying to book an appointment for a sneaky fourth booster.  You know what I’d love? You know what would actually make all of this Corona stuff totally bearable? I’d love it if Karl was my own personal Impfarzt. I’ve even got a white coat he could put on and everything. Preferably with nothing on underneath … come on, Karlie. Spritz mich voll!