What started out as a proposal to force vaccines on everyone 18 and older, was revised first to an Italian-style 50+ mandate, and then to today’s 60+ proposal. It has just been defeated by a vote of 378 to 296 – the victim both of Omicron and of the political manoeuvring of the CDU/CSU. Eager to deny the coalition government a political victory, the Christian Democrats fielded their own vaccine registry proposal, which failed even more decisively.

After four months of competing proposals, vacuous debate and skyrocketing infections across the already widely jabbed German population, the German vaccine mandate has gone down in flames. The vaccinators still dominate mainstream politics and the establishment press, but this is the beginning of the end for them, and they know it too.