Thursday, August 5th, 2021
Spahn’s proposal for the unvaccinated
SPD criticizes “2G instead of 3G” formula
Several SPD prime ministers join the opposition of the FDP and the left and speak out against planned tightening for unvaccinated people. “Threats don’t get us anywhere,” says Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Schwesig. Only the Greens are more open.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn not only encounters opposition from the FDP and the left with his proposal to tighten the corona rules for unvaccinated people – but also from the coalition partner SPD. Spahn’s position is not that of the federal government, says the social democratic federal justice minister Christine Lambrecht of the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. “There are no such plans on the table.” Several SPD state heads of government clearly rejected the proposal of the CDU federal minister.
In a report that was sent to the Bundestag and the federal states, Spahn’s department had listed proposals to keep the fourth corona wave as flat as possible. Particularly for unvaccinated people, depending on the vaccination quota, the incidence and the rate of severe clinical cases above certain limit values, further restrictions could be necessary again, it says among other things. This included contact restrictions and the limitation of participation or even exclusion at events and in the catering trade – also with a negative test. This can be summarized with the formula “2G instead of 3G”, the latter standing for “vaccinated, recovered, tested”.
“For essential things like public transport or visiting the town hall or hospital, it must be possible to have access with just a mask or a test,” explains Spahn in “Münchner Merkur”. “But for discos, stadiums or theaters, that is, areas that are not part of the basic service, I can also imagine access only for those who have been vaccinated or who have been tested.” Restricted access for unvaccinated people is also conceivable: “That, for example, 30,000 vaccinated people and 2,000 tested people may come to a football game in the Bayern stadium.”
Participation in public life
Bremen’s mayor Andreas Bovenschulte rejected this in the “Bild” newspaper: “I consider it wrong and legally inadmissible to exclude unvaccinated people from public life.” Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke said: “Nobody should be excluded from public life.” With a negative test, unvaccinated people should be allowed to continue to participate in events, for example. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig said in the paper that it was important that more people were vaccinated. “Threats don’t get us anywhere. We have to convince.”
The FDP, which in the spring had called for a separate relaxation for vaccinated people, has now reiterated its rejection of any government restrictions for unvaccinated people. “Anyone who has not been vaccinated or recovered should be able to participate in social life with a daily negative test. Anything else would be a disproportionate restriction of freedom,” said party leader Christian Lindner of the “Welt”. Due to a regionally different corona situation, it is also wrong to “lump the whole country together”.
The Greens are more open to unequal treatment of those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered compared to those who have only been tested. Baden-Württemberg’s green health minister, Manfred Lucha, called for a paradigm shift from the point in time when everyone was offered a vaccination: “Vaccinated people get back all their freedom, and stricter rules apply to those who have not been vaccinated.”
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