About seventy percent of Germans are “fully” vaccinated according to official terminology.
But complete is no longer complete, as it now requires a refresher to be protected.
Protected, in turn, is no longer protected, because those who are boosted can also infect and pass the virus on.
If you want, you can now think of more vocabulary to name the second booster, the re-vaccination with an anti-Omikron active ingredient or what may come after Omikron.
The individually obvious conclusion from the constant compulsion to adapt to new, previously unknown or ignored situations is always the same: Without vaccination, the likelihood of becoming seriously ill increases. People who now say that they would definitely not get vaccinated more than three times suggest that the third time it is a ritual. Or do you know something about vaccine intolerance that doesn't even exist yet?
But one is individual conclusions, the other the social effects of the constant correction of desired goals, required means and prospective solutions to problems.
To put it more briefly: The sense of the vaccination can hardly be questioned, there are a thousand objections to all other measures.
One after the other is presented as unavoidable, only to be taken back or "loosened" shortly afterwards.
One can call this a willingness to learn in health policy.
But whether this really covers all the formulas that have been used to justify the respective measures for two years?
In any case, its effects include confusion as to what is necessary and why, the fatalism of not being able to understand it in detail, and also loss of respect for politics.
No epitome of the sensible
The vaccination doubters are attested to be unreasonable. That is so, but so far they have a right to this unreason and, conversely, may not experience executive behavior as the epitome of the reasonable either. Unvaccinated police officers should be allowed to control 2G. Air filters in all primary school classrooms are treated as unaffordable. Outdoor events are prohibited, which pushes people indoors, where the risk of infection is significantly higher. The list is long.
The French President recently spoke of whoever acts irresponsibly is no longer a citizen. However, he does not propose a compulsory vaccination either, but announces that he wants to harass those who refuse to be vaccinated. The local measures are formulated less warlike, but they work in the same direction. 3G, 2G, 2G +, the latter with the result that people who have not yet been able to be boosted, many young people, for example, are subject to mandatory tests through no fault of their own, while at the same time they are told that the PCR tests are running out.
The vaccination is thus drawn to the same ambiguous field of contact-restricting measures to which it does not belong. Instead of establishing it as a well-founded duty, if it is clearly sensible, it is increasingly moralized when people refuse it. We now have more than 110,000 people who have died in agony and the insight that vaccination may only protect against infection for a certain period of time and not completely, but at least it greatly reduces the extent of the evil. And yet we have had to listen for a year that a general compulsory vaccination is out of the question. On the other hand, we had to think of: school closings, bankruptcies in retail and tourism, billion-dollar subsidies for companies, wearing down the nursing staff and so on. All of that was, although it didn't defeat the virus eithermore bearable than compulsory vaccination? Who can blame the doubters if they interpret this as an offer to refuse vaccination.
At this point, many refer to the terms “right to physical integrity” and “freedom of the person”. Article 2 paragraph 2 of the Basic Law sets it down and adds: "These rights may only be interfered with on the basis of a law." Liberals are also allowed to read this complete article and to think about whether a statutory vaccination requirement protects other freedoms than that of physical integrity to be expected. There is simply no restriction that state laws should not interfere with this integrity under any circumstances. It is just that the demand for justifications is particularly high.
The Münster lawyer Hinnerk Wißmann recently pointed out a civic justification in the “Verfassungsblog”.
The attempt to conduct behavior through moral appeals and, if that does not help, to achieve moral condemnations, is alien to the modern state.
Nobody can be harassed to see if they are denied the confrontation with an obligation.
Civic spirit is weakened more by cycles of unequal contact restrictions than by a general law.
"A free citizen may indeed find some things the state expects him to be wrong - and will still adhere to them." (Wißmann) The rest, as with other violations of the law, can be left to the effectiveness of proportionate sanctions.