Many people who have been vaccinated have two main questions.

First: How dark will this November be, please?

And second: why are there so many unvaccinated people here?

The German-speaking countries have the lowest vaccination rate in Western Europe.

Almost 68 percent of Germans are twice vaccinated against Covid-19, and even fewer of Austrians and Swiss.

In contrast, in Italy: 74 percent.

In Belgium: 75. In Spain: 79. In Portugal: a whopping 87. What's going on with us?

The answer has two parts. The first is about history, the second is about the present. They work together; it is like a tree whose growth depends both on the soil in which it is rooted and on the wind that bends it.

There is no apparent banality: Germans, Austrians and Swiss speak the same language.

Together there are a hundred million people.

This reverberation room is larger than any other in Western Europe.

Such a space is important to be heard and reinforced by like-minded people.

And if they are not nearby, then further away.

So it can happen, for example, that a vaccination opponent on Föhr posts an angry text about "sleeping sheep" and his neighbors there mistake him for a weirdo.

But he gets likes from Berlin, Rosenheim, Lugano or Klagenfurt.

They reinforce his feeling that he is right, and he may soon be writing a new text.

Merkel can only dream of Macron's power

The German-speaking countries not only have a large number of citizens, they also have decentralized structures. They are states, which means that the capitals do not have to determine a lot. The federal states are strong, in Switzerland the cantons. In this way, critics of the federal governments can feel particularly strong. According to the motto: You see it that way up there, but not we down here, we don't let anyone tell us anything.

In Switzerland, some see the vaccination campaign as a project by the central government, which is thus penetrating the cantons. Conversely, during the pandemic, some German Prime Ministers indicated that they see things differently than Chancellor Angela Merkel - and accordingly decided differently. Now they all recommend the vaccination, but the question of whether unvaccinated people are allowed to go to the restaurant, they answer differently. Merkel can only dream of the power that Emmanuel Macron has in centralized France.

German heads of government who had to deal with vaccine opponents would have wished for this power.

These have been around since vaccinations were around.

They really got going in the German Reich when the Reich Vaccination Act was passed in 1874.

That determined that all children should be vaccinated against smallpox.

Many parents refused.

The popular handbook “Die Frau als Hausärztin” even recommended fleeing the new law: “If you can, leave Germany until the children are adults.” Even now, anti-vaccination campaigners are again talking about wanting to emigrate if a vaccination were compulsory.