The race for the corona vaccine harbors enormous potential for conflict, in the distribution of the doses already produced between the states, but also over who is vaccinated and when. And then there are anti-vaccination militants who worry the authorities. In Germany, the vaccination centers will be guarded by security services and the police. After Great Britain, vaccination could now start in the USA in a few days. The time advantage could lead to significantly less vaccine being available elsewhere – also in Germany.
When will the US start the big vaccination?
In the Biontech files for investors there is an important date on page 18: “United States: Review on 10 Dec.” According to US media reports, the responsible Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could obtain an emergency approval for the Mainz vaccine this Thursday Biontech and its US partner Pfizer. Chief epidemiologist Anthony Fauci reckons that mass vaccination could start as early as next week. This can also have an impact on Germany, because EU approval is not expected before December 29th. Accordingly, the US market will initially receive massive supplies.
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Future US President Joe Biden promises “at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of American citizens” in the first 100 days of his term in office. That would mean that with every two necessary vaccinations, around 50 million Americans should be vaccinated by the end of May. Biontech / Pfizer has pledged 570 million vaccine doses for 2020 and 2021 to the EU states and 13 other countries. With the option of up to 600 million more cans. So far, the EU has pledged 200 million doses – in addition there are options worldwide for the equally promising vaccine from Moderna and that from Astra Zeneca.
What does that mean for Germany?
The EU achieved great success when it secured large margins for potential vaccines in preliminary contracts in the past few months: According to the EU Commission’s distribution key, Germany receives 18 percent of the vaccine doses ordered, while Berlin receives 4.5 percent of the German share. However, these assurances are of little use if enough vaccine cannot be produced. With the turbo approval in Great Britain, where vaccination has been taking place since Tuesday, large quantities of the vaccine will first go there. Should the USA follow suit with approval for the Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations, the market situation will become even more tense.
While Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) announced a month ago that a total of 100 million cans from Biontech / Pfizer had been secured through EU treaties and national agreements, only 69 million cans are written in one paper. For some time now, Spahn has been sounding more and more cautious: two weeks ago he was assuming vaccinations in December. Most recently, he spoke of the first mass vaccinations “by summer at the latest”. According to the BMG report that has now been submitted, the ministry is now assuming that the responsible committee of the European Medicines Agency, EMA, will vote on the approval of the Biontech / Pfizer vaccine on December 30th.
The committee is expected to vote on January 12 for the Moderna vaccine.
What consequences does this have for the vaccination schedule?
Above all, that it will take longer than initially thought. Spahn himself expects a maximum of eleven million doses from Biontech / Pfizer by the end of March, i.e. 5.5 million citizens who can be vaccinated by then. If many other states also approve this vaccine or those of Moderna and AstraZeneca, tensions are programmed. The figures from the ministry reflect the long-feared and now apparently emerging vaccination nationalism that threatens to break out between the leading industrial countries.
What is the current vaccination schedule?
Pre-registration for the vaccination is not yet possible. It is planned that this will take place via the portals of the statutory health insurance associations, and individual federal states want to set up call centers. The vaccine is given free of charge. “If there is a shortage of vaccines, a decision must be made as to which people or groups of people should be offered the vaccination as a priority,” says the Ministry of Health of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Federal Government’s Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) decides on this order. According to the previous plan, the residents of retirement and nursing homes are first on the agenda, as well as people over 80 years of age, and the staff in emergency rooms, transplant medicine and geriatric care.
According to the Robert Koch Institute, these priority groups to be vaccinated already comprise more than 8.6 million people. In a second priority group, the 75 to 80 year olds and residents of dementia facilities are to be vaccinated, as well as the staff there. The number of the second group is estimated at more than 6.7 million people. Stiko classifies more than 5.5 million people into a third vaccination group, who are between 70 and 75 years old, have serious previous illnesses or have contact with pregnant women.
According to this, people with less severe pre-existing illnesses, the age group between 65 and 70 years, teachers, educators and those with precarious employment should be given a chance. Here the group is estimated at 6.5 million. A fifth priority group then includes retail employees, police officers, firefighters or other relatives in the area of the so-called critical infrastructure of the state, as well as people between 60 and 65 years of age. This group also includes “key personnel in the state and federal governments”. But there is already criticism of this plan: Because of the goal of keeping the schools open, the German Association of Philologists, for example, is calling for teachers to be given higher priorities for corona vaccinations.
How does the Office for the Protection of the Constitution rate the opponents of the vaccination?
From the point of view of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, those who oppose the vaccination are dangerous, because they tend to conspiracy myths and get involved with lateral thinkers. A high-ranking expert warns against vaccination opponents who are heated up over the apocalyptic QAnon cult. “These people talk about the Jewish world conspiracy, that makes them even more radical.” The QAnon movement suggests, for example, that an elite of Jewish and other pedophiles kill small children in underground prisons in order to extract the supposedly rejuvenating substance adrenochrome from their blood.
The radicalization via the QAnon cult is one of the reasons for Baden-Württemberg’s protection of the constitution to classify the group “lateral thinking 711” as a “suspected case”. In the case of the unconventional thinkers, “bonds to the anti-Semitic and subversive conspiracy ideology QAnon, which originally came from the USA, are increasingly evident,” said State Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) on Wednesday. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution had previously made the group an object of observation.
The State Office is the first in the association of constitutional protection authorities to look at an organization of corona deniers because of “weighty clues for extremist efforts”. An indication was apparently also the “strategy meeting at which the leader of lateral thinking 711, Michael Ballweg, met with the citizen of the Reich Peter Fitzek in Thuringia in November.
What are the dangers for the safety of the project?
Interior Minister Strobl emphasized on Wednesday that “extremist conspiracy myths can be the breeding ground for acts of violence – for example, when resistance is called for against alleged injustice”. That is “highly dangerous”.
Security circles see the seeds of militant actions in the protest of radicalized anti-vaccination opponents against an alleged mandatory vaccination by the state. There is a risk of interference in vaccination centers, blockades and attacks by individual perpetrators. “It can escalate like the protests against the influx of refugees,” they say. From late summer 2015 onwards, the police registered a wave of attacks on asylum seekers’ accommodation, including arson attacks.
The first approaches to terror from the spectrum of corona deniers, radical opponents of vaccinations and conspiracy theorists were in Berlin. In October, unknown people threw incendiary devices against the building of the Robert Koch Institute in the Tempelhof district. Only hours later, an explosive device exploded in the Mitte district. There was a letter of confession with wild slogans nearby. Demands were made to end all state restrictions in the corona crisis, the resignation of the federal government and new elections.
In November, a barbecue lighter burned on the tire of a police car near the Brandenburg Gate, on the sidelines of the demonstration against the Infection Protection Act. Witnesses alerted officials that they could still prevent the vehicle from going up in flames.
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