In the spring and summer of the Corona year 2020, it was said that it could take years before a vaccine was found. If any. That added to worry, doubt and annoyance. Then, at the end of the year, the good news came: vaccines were developed! But not all of them get it everywhere at the same time. Again: worry, doubt, annoyance.
Anne Will chose her topic accordingly: “Little vaccine, highly contagious virus mutations – difficult start to the new year”.
All the more refreshing when Will’s guest, Reiner Haseloff, Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt and a physicist by default, reminded of reality. He did not think it was possible “that there would be a vaccine at this speed,” he said. One could “start this new year with a hallelujah.”
Frank Ulrich Montgomery, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the World Medical Association, agreed that he was optimistic: “We can do it!”. Even the virologist Melanie Brinkmann from the TU Braunschweig, who used to be cautious, admitted, despite many caveats, that it “looks quite good”, so far also for the effectiveness of the vaccine with the new variants.
But there was plenty of room for quarreling with the present. Wouldn’t the republic, Will asked the currently much-discussed question, have to order as many vaccine doses as possible in advance, even before approval? Manuela Schwesig, Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, suspected that such an approach, including the risk, would have been more economical than insisting on the EU process. You do not understand “why one did not rely on all vaccines”.
Montgomery pointed out that national rushing forward had been against EU budget rules. It became clear that betting the same billions on rouge and noir would have left the poorer countries of Europe behind and created additional differences. She “doesn’t really want to know how there was bargaining,” sighed Schwesig, who is currently regretting the hesitant vaccine delivery. However, she says that it is now a matter of “looking ahead.”
In the last (kilo) meters before the population is vaccinated, almost everyone in the group emphasized that it is more important than ever to convey and enforce protective measures even more clearly and intensively. Schwesig sees more need, especially when it comes to restricting mobility. Martin Knobbe, in turn, head of the Spiegel capital city office who researches Covid-19, complains above all about the inadequate sequencing of the virus genome. In Germany, which mutants are present is only checked every 900 tests. How much the new “British” variant has penetrated is therefore largely in the dark.
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Cascades of questions were to be expected and they came – there cannot yet be answers for all of them. How it will go with appointments for vaccinations, depending on the federal state, nobody can predict exactly. One thing is clear: it works. Whether vaccinated or convalescent people can still pass the virus on? “Probably less,” estimates Melanie Brinkmann.
When do vaccinated people acquire “sterile immunity”, ie neither infect themselves nor others? It’s not out yet. How good is it to close schools? The virologist regrets that it has come to this point, but it is necessary in the case of a high incidence.
Why are there so many vaccine skeptics among doctors and nurses? Montgomery assumes that communication deficits are to blame. It was not adequately explained why the approval went so unusually quickly. And what does Australia do better than Germany? Reiner Haseloff points laconically to the map: Germany is not an island, commuters come and go all the time.
Politics and medicine must work together to master the gigantic task of distributing a good cause, a vaccine, well and intelligently. Logistical and ethical questions must be answered as clearly as possible. Criticism is important, always. At the same time, everyone can ask themselves what they would be doing in the place of those responsible. That doesn’t change the criticism, but it changes its tone. Here, in the Will Salon, he remained moderate. Hallelujah for that too.
