In the dispute over compulsory vaccination, politicians shy away from stating clear and new rules. The key question, however, is a different one: is a lockdown still justifiable at all if the state has made an offer to all those eligible for vaccination?
By Horst von Buttlar, member of the star editor-in-chief
If you have ever been to a beer tent at Oktoberfest, you will know that you are not allowed to dance on the tables (only on the benches). If you do, security guards will come and kick you out. Nobody would think of arguing here with freedom of movement or even freedom of development. It is a rule that must be followed, even if the pictures from beer tents do not give the impression that there are rules in such places. The same goes, by the way, if you smoke in a restaurant where it is forbidden, if you behave badly or become abusive there. Or if a club bouncer doesn’t like your clothes or your face – he won’t let you in.
You may be wondering how I get the curve on the topic of the week – compulsory vaccination – from here. Well, it is very possible that you will be confronted with a new rule in many restaurants, cafes, cinemas and clubs in the future: You can only get in if you have been vaccinated, tested or recovered and can prove this. This is pretty easy in private business locations, such as curfew hours for tables outside. You don’t have to try a constitutional judge or roll over fundamental rights comments.
There will be other places where the whole thing is more complicated because there are basic needs and rights, in buses and suburban trains, in public institutions, but especially in schools. But here, too, you need simple and clear rules, and they are actually obvious. There are masks and quick tests.
We need clear rules
The problem is that the government and the responsible politicians are currently shirking the idea of clearly naming or structuring these rules. Once they were determined and creative in devising accommodation bans, distance requirements or rules for walking the dog, they created a baroque and paradoxical lockdown architecture. Politicians still oracle astonishingly much about ventilation devices, distance and alternating lessons, instead of avoiding in any case that there will be a state of emergency again in the schools in the next school year, which is approaching threateningly. There was also much too long advice on test obligations for travelers returning home, while many corona zombies had already returned home tanned with souvenirs in their luggage and virus variants in their throats (the test obligation has come into force).
And that brings us to the “compulsory vaccination”. First of all, it is a success that this coupling of words has made it into the German language. Because if we were still talking about conditions like in March (as is well known, the era of the “vaccination rage” and the “vaccine urge”), we would not have to argue about compulsory or compulsory vaccination. The term is a symptom that something new no longer fits: the supply exceeds the demand, we have a multiple of capacities, and the first cans will soon have to be thrown away.
On average, we currently inoculate almost 430,000 cans per day, which is more than double that. A good every second German is vaccinated, and another nine million have at least one vaccination. After all: 75 percent of those over 60 are currently fully vaccinated, so the risk groups are no longer acutely threatened. In addition, there are around eleven million people – children under the age of twelve, pregnant women, people with previous illnesses and those who have recovered – who cannot or are not allowed to be vaccinated. So there is, the difference to the 51 million is a good 20 million. How many of them already have vaccination appointments? Where are these people, who are they? What is stopping them? They won’t all be vaccine opponents, esotericists, weirdos, lateral thinkers and anthroposophists.
The debate about compulsory vaccination is therefore rightly conducted, especially since it is more about an urge to vaccinate, an urgency to vaccinate. From a liberal point of view, the matter is complicated: If one rejects compulsory vaccination – which is understandable – the rapid spread of the delta variant could lead to the next lockdown and thus to a restriction of the freedoms and basic rights that have just been won. And if you consider a lockdown to be disproportionate, one must ask: what would be the most effective countermeasure? Well, a vaccination campaign that, like in mid-June, comes to over a million vaccinations per day (on June 9 the peak was 1.4 million). This would close the gap by September and achieve herd immunity.
Moral duty to accept the vaccination offer
The desire for freedom here forms a kind of double helix, only that one has to decide in case of doubt: Which freedom is more important and valuable, can we both have? The matter is clear to me.
You should work with incentives, pressure, if you like, with cash bonuses, anything that gets a syringe in the arm helps. You should also pay for the rapid test, which could be an incentive for some not to be vaccinated – because you get “temporary security” when you want to meet friends in the evening.
The key question, however, is the following: Is a classic lockdown justifiable if everyone who is vaccinated has been offered a vaccination by September? The answer is clear: the complicated weighing of interests between protection of life and protection of freedom and fundamental rights – which we have struggled so hard about since March 2020 – this weighing has become fundamentally different because the state has fulfilled its duty to protect with the vaccination offer is. The moral duty to accept this offer of protection now rests with the citizen – because lockdown is a crude remedy that has too many side effects.
So you no longer have the right to the state, through massive interference with fundamental rights and shutting down public life, to reduce contacts and restrict social exchange. And since 50 to 60 million vaccinated people form a critical mass, the vulnerable groups are suddenly those who are not allowed to be vaccinated – and first and foremost the nine million children under the age of twelve. If the federal states force unvaccinated students back into alternating and distance learning models in the coming weeks, the state has failed, it would not have fulfilled its duty to protect the child’s well-being – which it has to do with other means: air filters, more staff, tests and so on further.
Another question will be: Is the incidence value, which determines and regulates all levels, still effective? The Ministry of Health and the Robert Koch Institute are already arguing. Is 200 the new 50? Or 150? Here, too, we need new, comprehensible benchmarks – because other countries have long had tens of thousands of cases without the intensive care units filling up. We shouldn’t wait until autumn to clarify these questions.
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
