Almost all medical associations are outraged by the nationwide expansion of the vaccination offer for children and adolescents from 12 to 17 years of age. Your anger is directed against politics. She committed a fall from grace by resigning herself for the first time in the pandemic from the position of the Standing Vaccination Commission, the scientific body with the highest reputation in vaccination issues in this country. Because the STIKO, which was hardly known to a citizen before Corona, sees no individual medical benefit for a vaccination against Covid-19 in this age cohort. For them, the data on possible side effects of the approved vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna are too meager to make a vaccination recommendation for healthy children and adolescents.
In other countries such as the United States, similarly rigorous scientific committees have assessed this differently, especially with a view to the far more contagious delta variant and long-covid consequences. Teenagers are advised to be vaccinated there. In this consideration, also out of concern about the mass quarantine of many infected students and thus also about school closings, Health Minister Spahn (CDU) and his country colleagues have decided to end the waiting. The move shows, however, the helplessness and inaction of the politicians in view of the many adults who refuse to be vaccinated. Now let the younger ones judge it. That is an evasion of the basic problem.