According to surveys, around 40 percent of Germans currently feel vaccinated. And if someone asks himself: “Huh?” Our author is also affected and tries to answer it here.
When my cousin in the USA posted on Facebook at the end of January that she had had her first injection, I still thought: Nice! Runs with the Americans! When I read on Twitter in February that a user I had followed had her first vaccination behind her, I was briefly irritated – but then quickly became happy again after reading it out and remembering that she is a nurse: Great! Of course, I think it’s absolutely right to vaccinate people in care first. But when my friend, who is about as irrelevant to the system in our society as I am and who is my age, excitedly told me the week before last that she had been vaccinated because her pregnant sister had given her as a contact person, he was with me Oven off. That stupid cow! And while I was wondering whether I should end my friendship right away or first ask her for tips on how I could sneak an early vaccination even though it’s not my turn yet, I realized: So this is this vaccination .. .
The vaccine is going around
According to a Forsa survey commissioned by “stern”, around 40 percent of unvaccinated Germans are currently envious of those who have been vaccinated. Since studies on vaccination readiness show that only around 70 percent of people in Germany want to be vaccinated against corona, 40 percent are quite a lot of people who are vaccinated. Because We only feel envy when someone has something we want. I don’t have to refer to the envy researcher Katja Corcoran, who said that in an interview with “stern.de”. We all know that from our own experience. We don’t envy anyone who has back pain, but everyone who can spend the winter somewhere by the sea at 25 degrees every year instead of being stuck in dreary, cold Hamburg. Grrr how I hate them, these northern German winter months …
Impfneid – a German specialty!
Incidentally, Impfneid is typically German. Not because we are the only country where the majority of those who want to be vaccinated are still unvaccinated – that is not the case. With our 29,000 vaccine doses administered per 100,000 inhabitants, we lag behind countries like Hungary, the USA, Chile and, of course, nerds Israel (between 50,000 and 120,000 administered vaccine doses per 100,000 people). But unfortunately there are numerous countries that are in a much worse position than we are. That is why Greta Thunberg did not donate 100,000 euros from her foundation to Germany, but to the Covax initiative, which is committed to a fairer distribution of vaccines worldwide – because globally, every 100,000 people are administered just 12,200 doses. But only on the edge.
“Impfneid” is typically German for the reason that it is a specialty of the German language that we can form lots of beautiful compound words (a string of nouns) that denote unusual things. Other cultures would take three to four words to describe a concept like vaccine envy. If the current situation were not so special and short-term, Impfneid could easily become a similar export hit as the good old Schadenfreude, which has established itself as a loan word in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish. From a linguistic point of view we could even be a little proud of our vaccination envy – and from a moral point of view …?
Vaccine envy is human
“Envy is initially something deeply human,” says Katja Corcoran in the aforementioned stern.de interview. Envy is a feeling that tells us what we want. And wishing to have a corona vaccination is certainly anything but reprehensible. After all, we associate this vaccination with an end to the fear of infection. We associate it with the regaining of freedoms – e.g. B. to travel again or go to the hairdresser without having to be tested beforehand. And by the way, with a vaccination, we also help to ensure that the pandemic ends for everyone. So if the desire for a vaccination is reflected in harmless vaccination envy – so what ?!
This vaccine envy becomes problematic, however, when it gets out of hand, turns into resentment, turns off our common sense and makes us do stupid things. For example, to rebel against the fact that already vaccinated people get some freedoms back, because from a rational point of view everything speaks in favor of granting them. It would also be stupid to call a vaccinated friend out of vaccination envy as a stupid cow … But what can we do to prevent derailments and to keep our vaccination envy in check?
What can and cannot help against vaccination envy
In any case, I personally don’t find it particularly helpful to see posters everywhere calling on celebrities like Uschi Glas to be vaccinated. As a vaccinee who is not allowed to do so, it only upsets me even more. And I dare to doubt that such posters take away their fear of vaccination-afraid or convince opponents of vaccination to let themselves be piqued. If I was afraid of something or absolutely did not want something and someone said to me on every corner, “do it now!”, That would probably not “convert” me, but put pressure and stress on me (on the other hand, it is of course always good, Uschi Glass in sight! Just for the record.)
In fact, it mostly seems that feelings only become stronger and more uncontrollable for us when we or others try to forbid them to us or we are ashamed of them. This applies to lusts and desires as well as to vaccine envy and fear. Therefore – apart from the possibility of simply vaccinating anyone who wants to immediately – speaking openly about our vaccination envy is probably one of the best ways to deal with it and prevent it from derailing. To do this, however, we need the security that nobody will judge us for what we feel. That others react with respect and understanding when we tell them that we are jealous – or that we are afraid of a vaccination. Do we have this security? We’d probably have to try it out. And if in doubt, work towards it together.
For me, my girlfriend is no longer a stupid cow and I don’t want to end my friendship with her anymore. Don’t worry: she didn’t have to give me any tips on how to get an early vaccination appointment, because I ruled out trying to do that. For now, I feel relaxed enough to wait a while since I’ve dealt with my vaccine envy and understood where it came from. And by the way, I found it extremely helpful and practical to have a nice, compact compound available and not have to deal with a cumbersome description of three to four words all the time – I say yes, we can really rely on our noun compositions to imagine something.
Sources used: stern.de, tagesschau.de, wikipedia.de