>> “If we have offered everyone in Germany a vaccination offer, then we can return to normality in all areas.” When asked about this sentence in a ZDF interview on September 12, 2021, Chancellor Helge Braun replied that the promise could not yet be implemented , among other things because there is no vaccination offer for children. This means that a vaccination offer has not yet been made to “everyone”. When heard through the ear of an educator, this means: We can only return to normality when all children have been offered vaccinations. So the problem lies with the children. And this message also reaches the children.
An offer for children aged 12 and over has been available, at least since the STIKO recommended the corresponding vaccination. Biontech was recently the first company to present study results on the effectiveness of its Covid-19 vaccine for five to eleven year olds (see TAGESSPIEGEL, September 21, 2021). But before all this, there is a parenthesis: The purpose of vaccinating children is not primarily to protect the children. “The Covid-19 survival rate for children under 18 without drug treatment is 99,998 %.” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The indications of a particular “Long Covid” risk among young people are now being put into perspective. Based on studies, people now even doubt that Long Covid is even a problem among minors (see ZDF today-journal from July 28, 2021).
It is therefore very likely that politicians are primarily pushing for the vaccination of children to create so-called “herd immunity”. However, this is a reason that does not necessarily inspire trust among parents and children. Children are made into a means to an end. Society's message to them is: You are a risk of infection. If you don't get vaccinated - or if your parents don't want you to - then society as a whole will continue to suffer from the restrictions on basic rights, and you are to blame.
This discussion has reached schools and daycare centers: among parents, among educational staff, and among young people themselves, including the smallest and most vulnerable. It divides educators and teachers, children's groups and school classes, parent representatives and parents' evenings, and finally families, including the relationship between parents and children - for a variety of reasons. Opinions are increasingly divided on the question of vaccination, or more precisely: after this vaccination. It is no longer just a matter of coolly weighing up possible risks. It's about the question of trust in politics, media and science. It's about mistrust, defamation, injuries, breaking off conversations, breaking off relationships. The language about the vaccination itself also fails to the extent that it escalates: while some speak of the vaccination as a “salvation,” others call it a “bio-weapon” (Mike Yeadon, Luc Montagnier, among others).
Let's stay briefly with the vaccination. Never in history has the “granting” of fundamental rights been tied to vaccination. Never before has a comprehensive health policy prevention strategy been combined with a vaccine, the long-term consequences of which cannot be known simply because it has only been used for almost a year. This vaccination in particular challenges trust in particular. However, this trust is shaken when skepticism provokes aggression, especially in public language – “anti-vaxxers”, “esoterics”, “crazy people” (Joachim Gauck). It is understandable that parents pay particular attention when vaccinating their children. Can you blame them if, under the increased pressure to vaccinate, they start to deal with stories like that of the 2009 swine flu, as told in the Arte documentary “Profiteurs of Fear” and which has been on the Internet for 1½ years now? At that time, a vaccine was offered as a safe way out of the pandemic; After a long time it turned out that it caused a serious side effect (narcolepsy), whereupon it was immediately withdrawn from the market.
Politicians have already admitted in retrospect in autumn 2020 that during the first lockdown they paid too little attention to children and young people, nor to the overwhelmed parents in precarious circumstances, to sexual violence and abuse in families, to loneliness and depression , washing compulsions, gambling addiction, eating disorders and so on. In the fall of this year the pressure will continue, and for many people it feels even sharper than in the spring of 2021, since the topic of vaccination was added. The peda-
In any case, the legal price is high if one makes the “vaccination” of children and young people the key to keeping educational institutions open, or even the key to ending the measures. Because a girl tested positive, an entire daycare center was closed and the unvaccinated parents were sent into quarantine. Because a boy in third grade has a medical mask exemption, he has to sit in the back corner and is surrounded by Plexiglass panels. Teachers ask classes in classes who has been vaccinated and who has not been vaccinated. Unvaccinated children have to listen to teachers saying things like: “When I’m in the intensive care unit, I’ll write you a postcard.” Anyone who refuses to answer the question “Are you vaccinated?” is considered unvaccinated. Bullying situations not only arise, but are even legitimized: If unvaccinated people are teased by vaccinated people, then that is “perhaps acceptable” (Heinz Faßmann, ÖVP Education Minister, in meine.at, August 12, 2021). The educational and thus also health collateral damage is pushed aside. They will keep society busy for many years to come. They are “dramatic – they are also much more dramatic than the consequences of the infection itself” (Jakob Maske, spokesman for the Federal Association of Pediatricians and Adolescents, ZDF-Mittagsmagazin, September 15, 2021).
Politics has gone astray. That's why it increases the pressure on the children and their parents. But instead of dealing with the problem on the backs of the children, something completely different would be needed, for example a speech to the children: You are not the risk. It's not your fault that the measures still have to be maintained. In general: all this blaming of certain groups is misleading us. What's more: you don't need to protect us - because we'll take care of protecting ourselves. <<