As the German Health Ministry drowns in millions of unwanted vaccine doses, Karl Lauterbach begs Germans to please, please line up for their fifth jab
From the erstwhile vaccine propagandists at Der Spiegel, who I think are also tiring of the insipid autumnal vaccination liturgy and its noxious political enablers:
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has again called on people to get a booster vaccination. “Despite the pandemic and awareness campaigns, the importance of the Covid booster is apparently greatly underestimated,” he tells Spiegel. “So far, unfortunately, only a fraction of those for whom it is recommended have had a booster vaccination.” He calls on all at-risk groups and older people to catch up and ideally combine it with a flu vaccination.
According to the vaccine uptake statistics of the Robert Koch Institute, only about 2.5 million people have received three or more boosters. This means that only a fraction of those over 60 are likely to have sufficient protection against Covid …
They let Lauterbach flap his gums a little more about population immunity, Long Covid, secondary infections and how the vaccines can make all this better because reasons, before sticking the knife in him:
Lauterbach urgently needs to boost vaccine uptake. The pharmaceutical contracts concluded under his predecessor Jens Spahn have secured much larger quantities of vaccine than are currently being used. Between September and November, about 14.1 million vaccine doses of monovalent vaccine targeted at XBB 1.5. will be delivered. An additional 10.6 million vaccine doses of Novavax XBB 1.5. vaccines will also become available, as soon as they are approved by the European Commission.
Our dissolute snake oil salesmen – who is either so stupid or so desperate that he actually tweeted a link to this not-so-subtle takedown – is currently sitting on 11.5 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses, trembling at the prospect of Novavax dropping another 10 million on his head, with no hope at all that more than 5 million Germans will ever line up for these worthless products. This is despite the best efforts of the regional press, who have been trying to gaslight their elderly readers into getting yet another jab since September. Today the Main Post published a typical piece, claiming that vaccine demand is starting to creep up now, really it is; while yesterday it was the turn of Münchner Merkur to claim that everyone is talking about the shiny new vaccines and to drag in some pulmonologist to talk about the “predominantly positive reception” they’ve enjoyed. Dear idiot reporters: The official vaccine dashboards may be down, but the RKI still publish day-by-day uptake statistics. Stop lying.
I have a relative in a very liberal area that got a total of 5 covid shots. She recently went to her doctor and asked about the latest and her primary care physician told her to stop. No more covid shots. This is the same doctor that recommended it in the past.
Bourla recently complained nobody wants to talk about covid anymore and blamed big anti-vax sentiment. Apparently the problem has finally reached doctors.
You know what. A couple of years ago, I would simply not have believed that a German Minister for Health would be pushing a product known to have failed and to be dangerous to patient health, simply to cover up the political inconvenience of having pre-ordered millions of doses of this failed product at massive taxpayer expense.
I simply wouldn't have believed it.
Mind you, I'm 47. I've been in proximity to politics and politicians for decades. Yet the rot is truly something new. It didn't exist pre-2016, leastways not to nearly this extent. I don't even mean corruption. I mean rank buffoonery. Complete and unmitigated incompetence and stupidity.