Thursday, January 13, 2022
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Ethics Council: Conditions for compulsory vaccination not met
The chairwoman of the German Ethics Council does not see the prerequisites for a general vaccination requirement as yet. According to Alena Buyx, politicians have to take “a whole series” of measures before the introduction of such a measure can be justified.
From the point of view of the German Ethics Council, numerous conditions for the introduction of a general compulsory vaccination have not yet been met. “We wrote down in the workbook for politicians what would have to be done before compulsory vaccination could come: For example, one would have to have many more low-threshold, nationwide vaccination offers. A real target-group-specific strategy, however, has so far been neglected,” said Council Chairman Alena Buyx the ” Mirror”. A permanent vaccination infrastructure and a large number of good counseling services are also required. “So there is a whole range of conditions or accompanying measures that are mandatory before it could become compulsory in our opinion.”
According to Buyx, the ethics council’s position on the possible introduction of a general vaccination requirement is also based on which corona variant is currently dominating the infection process. When the majority of the committee recommended an expansion of the compulsory vaccination of certain occupational groups to “substantial parts of the population” in December, this statement was “essentially written under the conditions of the Delta variant”. If the facts in the pandemic – for example due to the highly infectious omicron variant – change significantly, one also has to “look again at normative assessments as they have been made,” she emphasized. “Anything else would be irresponsible.”
The members of the ethics council stand for “revision openness”, and they recommend that to politics, Buyx told the news magazine. “It may be that important things change again, for example that our previous vaccination quota for future, more harmless mutations is sufficient to get into a controlled endemic situation.” Of course, the opposite can also happen.
Of the current 24 members of the Ethics Council, at the end of December 20 had spoken out in favor of extending the compulsory vaccination and 4 against. There were different views on the extent of the expansion: 13 of the 20 who are in favor of extending the compulsory vaccination to all adults who could be vaccinated. 7 were in favor of limiting this to corona risk groups such as the elderly or previously ill.