Saturday, December 4th 2021
Not justified for everyone
Ethics Council member is considering compulsory vaccination for the elderly
For ethics council member Rostalski, the federal government has not yet taken all measures to convince people to take the injection against Corona. She therefore rejects a general vaccination requirement. For those over 60, the lawyer considers such a regulation to be possible.
The legal scientist Frauke Rostalski, member of the German Ethics Council, is critical of the general compulsory vaccination. “Compulsory vaccination for those who do not have an increased risk of ending up in the intensive care unit with Covid-19 cannot generally be justified from my point of view,” she told the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”.
There is also the question of whether the German state “really had already taken all the instruments in hand” before resorting to mandatory vaccination, continued the lawyer. “And I would say: No.” Concerns about a general compulsory vaccination are an expression of a feeling “that the state is going too far”. To defend oneself against such an obligation corresponds to a deep conviction of the law and its validity.
It looks different with the over 60-year-olds, said Rostalski. According to the register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), 84 percent of Covid patients in the intensive care unit are older than 50 years, 63 percent are older than 60 years. “Then it becomes obvious that precisely these people have to be protected in order to avoid overloading the health system,” said Rostalski.
Most recently, numerous politicians had spoken out in favor of a general compulsory vaccination against Corona, but there are also well-known negative voices. Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz recently announced that a legislative process on the general compulsory corona vaccination would be initiated “promptly”. Every MP should be able to “vote according to his conscience”. According to media information, a vaccination requirement for staff in hospitals, care facilities and outpatient care services should apply from mid-March.