Europe: Should the vaccine be compulsory?
Britain’s “historic mass vaccination campaign” has begun with a jab to the arm of a 90-year-old grandmother, said Jessica Murray in The Guardian (U.K.). Margaret Keenan, a former shop assistant from Coventry, said it was a “privilege” to be the first person in the world to receive Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial. The U.K.’s initial batch of 800,000 shots—enough to inoculate 400,000 people with two doses—will be administered at 50 hospitals around the country, with people ages 80 and over who had existing hospital appointments being first in line. As more vaccines are approved, hopefully before the end of the year, shots will go first to nursing-home residents and workers, then to front-line healthcare staff, then by age cohort in five-year increments—80 and older, 75 and older, and so on. The National Health Service will inform residents when their shot is available. “Thank you to our NHS,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “and to everyone who has been following the rules to protect others. We will beat this together.” Vaccination won’t be mandatory, but the assumption is that most Britons will be glad to get inoculated.
The vaccine ought to be compulsory, said Nikolaus Blome in Der Spiegel (Germany). To win back our lives and our economies, we need 70 percent of the population to be immune to Covid-19.
But out of “political cowardice,” European governments refuse to require inoculations. It’s not as if a mandate would be authoritarian overreach. In Germany, we already require that schoolkids get the measles shot. So why are we pandering to conspiracy theorists who fear they’ll be injected with trackable microchips designed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates? Because ordering Europeans to vaccination centers will backfire, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times (U.K.). If people are required to secure documentation proving they’ve had the shot, getting that paperwork will become “a cheat, and a fudge, and a waste of time.” Look at the French law requiring a venereal disease test before marriage. When my intended and I went to get one, the doctor simply presented us with the certificate. When we asked about the blood draw, the doctor said, “Oh, you want me to actually do it?” and, surprised, performed it “squeamishly, perhaps wondering at our hobbies.”
Plenty of bored, frustrated Europeans will gladly roll up a sleeve if that means they can once again enjoy nights out with friends and vacations abroad, said Jacqueline Büchi in Tages-Anzeiger (Switzerland). Switzerland and many other European nations allow private companies to mandate vaccination for employees and customers, and the Australian airline Qantas has already announced that only people who’ve had a Covid-19 shot will be allowed on its planes. Nightclub owners and concert organizers, desperate to pack crowds into venues again, will likely follow suit. Governments are betting their citizens will opt freely for an injection, said Michele Ainis in La Repubblica (Italy). The choice will be ours, “but those who reject it will suffer a kind of prison sentence.” We can only hope that such a motivation will persuade enough of us to get vaccinated and vanquish the pandemic.