Minute-by-minute news about the coronavirus has long since disappeared from the front pages. Masks are rarely worn in public, and the number of new vaccinations seems to have largely stagnated. After more than three years of the pandemic, many are longing for closure. What is still missing, however, is a final review.
Lateral thinkers and opponents of vaccination come up against this gap in the balance sheet. If you believe their reasoning, they always want to have known things correctly, for example when it comes to masks or vaccinations. The most frequently spread story: With the corona vaccinations, an unpredictable drug was forced on everyone. You yourself, on the other hand, have always said that the drugs – often referred to by you as “poison injection” or “gene injection” – are dangerous to fatal. They claim that what was once branded as a conspiracy myth is now accepted as fact.
But that is simply wrong, as is shown by what is probably the most common thesis: lateral thinkers, for example, accuse politics and science of having claimed that there are no side effects at all with the corona vaccination. But that is completely exaggerated.
Yes, there were voices like that of today’s Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), who occasionally spoke of “vaccinations without side effects”. But science has made it clear from the start that there are no remedies without side effects. This applies to both Covid and flu vaccinations.
Today’s reports about serious health consequences after a corona vaccination are very important in order to raise awareness of the topic. However, it should not be overlooked how rarely such cases actually occur in the population and how much a vaccination protects against possible serious damage after a Covid disease.
“Although there was no data at all at the time, this milieu decided from the start that vaccination was the devil,” says psychologist Lea Frühwirth from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (Cemas). The institute examines radicalization tendencies and conspiracy stories on the internet.
According to Frühwirth, this picture, to which the supporters are still referring, was not created on the basis of specialist knowledge and the examination of facts. But purely from a gut feeling. “If you happen to come up with a result that you assumed two years earlier, then it’s the case of a blind hen that sometimes finds a seed,” says the Cemas scientist.
At certain moments, politicians had to make decisions when scientific data and experience on the corona virus were still scarce, but the time pressure was extremely high. What is remembered from April 2020 is the statement by the former Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) that in a few months a lot will probably have to be forgiven.
The lateral thinking scene, on the other hand, insisted early on to be the exclusive bearer of the truth. Those who regarded scientific evidence as elementary were “sleeping sheep” to them. A group ideology with social ties has developed in the milieu. In this bubble, followers got their validation. Old friendships may have ended.
“The fall rate of having to admit that you were wrong is enormous,” says Cemas expert Frühwirth of the DPA news agency. Society also laughed at these people as “covidiots”, which made it even more difficult to turn back. How are you supposed to get out of that face-saving? “So they stick to their picture and if necessary rewrite everything so that in the end they were somehow right.”
