Wednesday November 10, 2021
Hospital debate at Lanz
Doctor Doc Caro: “Have to talk about mandatory vaccination”
By Marko Schlichting
The intensive care units are groaning under the pressure of the fourth wave. In many hospitals the capacity limit has been reached. More and more experts are calling for the nationwide introduction of the 2G rule. The guests at Markus Lanz meanwhile also consider compulsory vaccinations conceivable.
Her patients call her “Doc Caro”. That’s what she calls herself on her blog. She is a passionate doctor. Recently, Dr. Carola Holzner published her first book. “One for all – as an emergency doctor between hope and reality” it says. In it, the senior doctor from the Ruhr area describes her experiences – in the hospital, in the intensive care unit. Here she meets her patients at eye level, speaks to them and advises them. Even when it comes to Corona. And that is urgently needed, she says at Markus Lanz on ZDF. She says she keeps asking unvaccinated patients in the emergency room why they haven’t been vaccinated. Most have concerns that have not yet been resolved. She apparently succeeds because she is certain: “If I had on a smock with vaccination doses, I would be able to convince nine out of ten people.” Many people with concerns have not yet been reached. “I can only reach them when I stand in front of them.”
The hospitals are groaning under the fourth corona wave. There are too few nursing staff in the intensive care units. More and more beds for corona patients have to be shut down. There is a lack of staff to monitor ventilators. Many intensive care units were chronically overloaded even before Corona, says “Doc Caro”.
Now the situation is dire. Take Bavaria as an example. There the so-called hospital traffic light has jumped to red. On Monday, according to the DIVI intensive care register, 609 people with Covid-19 were in the intensive care units in the Free State. More than half of them have to be ventilated. There were still 446 vacant intensive care beds throughout Bavaria, 155 of which were ventilated.
“We mess around”
“The hair on the back of my neck is on the brink because we’ve been discussing the same thing for a year and now, with a knowing eye, we went into this autumn completely unprepared,” says Carola Holzner at Markus Lanz. And book author Frank Schätzing (The Swarm; What if we simply save the world) criticizes: “We egg around.” Most of the people in the intensive care units are now unvaccinated. Now one has to talk about compulsory vaccination, among other things. Carola Holzner sees it that way too. The situation is so serious that vaccination must be a last resort.
“I feel ashamed”
How it came to this situation, the Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier tries to explain – and does not cut the best figure. There was already no lack of warnings in the summer, and Chancellor Angela Merkel also pointed out the coming crisis. But the press wrote about scare tactics straight away. Yes, he knows about the overloading of the nursing staff, says Altmaier. And adds, “I’m ashamed of it.” Health Minister Jens Spahn expressed his opinion a few weeks ago and said that the epidemic emergency could now end. He, Altmaier, was against it.
To the criticism that the federal government had done too little to prepare for the current crisis in the last few months, he had an answer that the other guests acknowledged with a slightly ironic laugh: “It may be that the Bundestag elections attract attention for a moment long been distracted from the subject. ” Corona did not belong to the repertoire of all election campaigners from the start. But now we have to act. A prime ministerial conference is urgently needed, we have to talk about the nationwide introduction of 2G and about compulsory vaccination for certain professions.
Frank Schätzing also believes that the 2G rule can actually make a difference. The carnival in Cologne was declared a 2G event. It is hoped that this will encourage more people to vaccinate. He, too, relies primarily on conviction. “We live in a free society, and so we also have the freedom to argue,” he says. People shouldn’t be pilloried immediately. And you have to take the fears of the unvaccinated seriously.