what makes German-speaking populations a bit more reluctant to get vaccinated than other Western countries? Is it due to the influence of homeopathy in German culture?
what makes German-speaking populations a bit more reluctant to get vaccinated than other Western countries? Is it due to the influence of homeopathy in German culture?
26 comments
Less severe hit by corona id guess.
And for some reason, it seems like the antivaxxers are seen as very important peoiple that need to be catered too by politicians, instead of enforcing vaccination and some real consequences for the fucktards.
Take a look at Slavic countries, bro.
As a Slav myself, I’m really surprised it’s going so bad.
Actually German numbers may be much higher, as RKI, an institution responsible for counting, recently admitted the official numbers are a lot lower than real numbers.
I know of very many German doctors who are prepared to offer homeopathic remedies to those who want it, but I’ve not heard of significant numbers of people preferring a homeopathic cure instead of a vaccine, and I’ve not heard of many doctors refusing to give the vaccine for that reason. There were a few isolated cases of medical staff injecting a saline solution or giving fake vaccination certificates, but the reasons for doing so were not, as far as I am aware, anything to do with homeopathy.
IRL, the reasons people I have spoken to for refusing the vaccine are things like, “I can’t believe the vaccine has been tested enough to be safe,” or, “People are blowing this all out of proportion, it’s just a flu or a bad cold.” My wife has a couple of conspiracy theorist coworkers who mutter dark things about Bill Gates and his tracker chips (but who also have their GPS-enabled phones with them everywhere they go, naturally), but never have I heard, “No no, my doctor’s giving me a homeopathic treatment.”
There are a few points that should be made here:
1. It is possible that the figure for Germany is lower than the true figure. A lot of people apparently got their jabs in a different country which are not counted in the statistics, and there are significant numbers of cases in which doctors incorrectly recorded a single-jab vaccine as the first of two shots, which therefore don’t show up as “fully vaccinated”. Some estimates put the true figure as high as 80%, but given the sharply rising infection rates we’re currently seeing I reckon that might be too optimistic: herd immunity clearly hasn’t been achieved yet.
2. A number of highly influential German celebrities, most notoriously Xavier Naidoo and Nena, have added their voices to the anti-vaxxer camp, some of them in full-on conspiracy theorist mode.
3. In some countries — for example, the UK — people were automatically contacted and invited to present themselves for vaccination. In Germany, members of the public had to take the initiative and add their names to waiting lists. That increases the risk of people remaining unvaccinated simply because they just never got around to it.
4. On your graph, most of the countries above Germany had terrible and terrifying experiences of the pandemic last year, in some cases with coffins piling up outside and the healthcare services unable to cope. Germany managed to avoid that, but that makes it easier for people to convince themselves that the pandemic isn’t all that bad.
On this point:
> their rate of vaccination is comparable to Saudi Arabia ,despite German speaking countries being extremely secular
Religion has nothing to do with it. It’s true that most of the excessively fundamentalist religious groups of the type commonly found in the US are also likely to be freedom-loving covid-deniers, but that type of group is quite rare in this part of Europe.
There was an interesting article in our local paper a week or two ago about an initiative at a local mosque. They had special “covid services”, where the imam told the faithful they needed to be vaccinated, and after the service Turkish-speaking medical staff were on hand to answer questions and administer the vaccine. The response was, apparently, excellent: it seems that the reluctance among that particular community was not down to any religious concerns, but simply because nobody had explained it to them in terms they could grasp (or understand, as for many of them German is a second language and a few speak no German at all).
I’m all for poking fun at Homeopathy, but I think this isn’t the cause but it’s a similar sentiment, namely, having to one-up things considered common knowledge (or practice, etc.)
Take a look at the first places: Spain, Italy, France. Those are countries which had massive problems in the first waves. That includes pictures of a totally overloaded health system and military transporting corpses to crematories.
Germany never had an overloaded health system. There were no pictures like the examples above. You can say that germany made a good job. Too good to have a higher vaccination rate driven by experience.
Germany came relatively mildly trough the pandemic. That’s different to Spain or Portugal where more people know somebody who died of covid
I think the tendency to believe in homeopathy stuff and anti covid(-vaccine) conspiracies are in relation to each other. And I feel both are pretty popular
I live in Germany and a reason that I have heard from friends resisting getting vaccinated – among others – is that they have an anti-authoritarian ideology and mainly do not want to be forced to do so.
It’s just that Germany has more idiots than you expected.
I was surprised, too.
Probably due to the fact that Germany is a primary target for QAnon-propaganda outside the US and they are the key source of anti-vaxx disinformation. A few months ago Robert Kennedy even spoke in Berlin to a crowd of covid-deniers and QAnon-fans, who promptly attacked our government building waving CSA and QAnon-flags.
So no, got nothing to do with homeopathy, but with the US’ cultural influence in Germany.
I don’t think so. The main reason is probably the influence of the AfD in the east and movements like the “Querdenker”. It’s not unlike the anti-vaxxers situated in the USA. Just a bunch of stupid people, really …
Germany has far more idiots than Germans want to admit and people outside of Germany know.
It’s that simple.
There is a alarmingly high rising amount of conspiracy theorists, fascists, people who are uneduacted and similar. Its either down to them doing demonstrations and actively sabotage the vaccination progress, or the media who make headlines everyday about vose people and seemingly artificially raise the amount of them, and scare or indoctrinate others to think similarly.
And in my numble oppinion, its down to the BILD “newspaper” wich critisizes the entire development and policy since 2019 (look up for Christian Drosten and his clash with them if you are interested and how BILD shifted their oppinion about him in half a year) propaganda seems to get sn comeback, but instead of an fuhrer they now believe in utter bullshit
Germans are surprisingly unscientitic and superstitious when it comes to medicine. Homeopathy, chiropractic, herbal medicine, and other alternative medicines are far more popular in German speaking areas than other comparable Western nations.
I think Spain, Italy, etc. are more collectivist than Germany, Switzerland, etc.
The differences are really smal so it might also have to do with how the statistics are made. For example here in Germany even then infection numbers are still a little bit behind reality as they are getting through a long (some might say inefficient) process before being published. Even our newspapers have newer numbers then the official institution.
Germany is full of quack doctors and quack medicine. I ve met a young nurse saying she does not believe in vaccines. I’ve asked a doctor how he can sell homeopathic shit and his answer was:” I don’t believe in it, but if I don’t sell, I have no patients”.
I guess its because a lot of Germans don’t like to be told what to do. Even though it doesn’t make sense. Plus, there were elections shifting the sentiment to the political stage.
The german constitution takes the protection of ones own body very seriously.
Measures like the italian mandatory vaccination for all workers likely wouldn’t even pass the parliament for that reason.
If everyone in Germany who isnt vaccinated lost their job we would have similar vaccination rates.
Of the people I know or am somewhat acquainted with, that are yet to be vaccinated the reasons are as follows: 2 believe they have a good enough immune system so not necessary, 1 wants to wait a bit in case any negative side effects come, 2 (work acquaintances so not people I would otherwise associate with) are conspiracy theorists and AFD voters, and 3 people have had covid and don’t “need” to get vaccinated.
And then there is me, who would give their right arm to be vaccinated but thanks to complications with cancer treatment has to wait “a bit” longer. Hopefully only 3 weeks but not yet certain.
The majority of people I know are either vaccinated or I don’t know their vaccination status, but there are definitely a few outliers and I know my circle is not alone in that. Everyone knows at least 1 person with a similar reason to the ones listed above.
2 reasons:
– Germany went through the pandemic relatively mildly till now
– the government hasn’t been forcing the population to vaccinate so aggressively as for example Italy and France.
As a German, i honestly believe that Germans are some of the least intelligent people in existence. I mean collectively and also not in terms of science or planning. But Germans and also Americans of German descend are entitled, nagging, always know better, never do better, suspicious of others, unsolidary.
We’re the ethnicity of Karen.
It’s probably die to the fact that here in germany (yes I am from germany) medical treatment is “free” for everybody and we didn’t get hit by the Virus as harsh as e.g. france britain or Italy. Our deathtoll was significantly lower than in these countries which mich explain some people’s hesetance to get vaccinated.
But also germans in general are super conservative and distrust anything new and since covid vaccinations don’t have long term research to back them many just don’t get vaccinated for instance my mum. There’s nothing wrong with this and most of these people will get vacvinated it 2 to 5 years depending on the effectiveness of the vaccination.
Partially. Another influence is Russian propaganda in German alternative media, like RT.
We just have an insane amount of wannabe Doctors whose only degree was achieved by reading Facebook anti corona posts.