Karl Lauterbach declares that if too many people take advantage of his dumb vaccination incentives, he'll withdraw them

The vaccinator funhouse that is the Federal Republic of Germany just gets crazier and crazier

Quadruple-vaccinated Paxlovid gobbling Karl Lauterbach proudly tweets his latest negative test result.

I try very hard to prevent Karl Lauterbach from becoming the sole focus of this blog, but I want you to know that it is a great effort, as the deranged antics of the man cry out for commentary.

We saw last week that Lauterbach’s proposed Infection Protection Act will authorise the German federal states to reimpose mask mandates, with bizarre exemptions for the “freshly vaccinated” – those who have been jabbed within the last three months. When Lauterbach appeared on state media to promote his law, he explained:

It’s just important to me that we always have an indoor mask mandate [in the Fall]. … And that in bars and restaurants, there’s an exception if you’re freshly vaccinated or recovered – that’s an incentive for vaccination.

My emphasis.

The Berliner Morgenpost accordingly reported that Lauterbach hoped these rules would encourage third, fourth and soon also fifth doses. There ensued a deeply absurd discussion across the press about the feasibility and wisdom of indefinite quarterly vaccination. A survey commissioned by BILD revealed (and you have no idea how thankful I am for this) that “The Majority of Germans Are Opposed to Unending Jabs” but that a plurality of SPD voters (Lauterbach’s party) are crazy enough to go along.

Well, after a few days of being lampooned for his dumb rule, Lauterbach decided to address his critics. He tweeted to general astonishment that, actually, “Nobody recommends vaccination every three months,” even though just days before he had promoted rules deliberately incentivising precisely this. Faced with the obvious objections, he went further, asking: “Do you really believe that people are going to get vaccinated every three months just so they can visit restaurants without masks?” even though 48% of his own voters had just told pollsters that’s exactly what they were going to do. “If we really saw this happening,” he continued, “we’d change the rule and end the exemption.”