STUTTGART (GERMANY) – Christoph Hueck illustrates the challenge Germany faces in rolling out a mass vaccination campaign to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. A scientist living in a wealthy, high-tech region, he does not plan to have any of the shots on offer.
“I will not get vaccinated,” Hueck, a molecular geneticist who authored a string of immunology papers before changing careers, said with a smile.
Now 59, he trains teachers for Waldorf kindergartens inspired by esoteric thinker Rudolf Steiner, which began in Stuttgart. He has also addressed several anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests, although he does not reject vaccines altogether.
“I am convinced that should I get infected anywhere, I will weather the illness,” he said of COVID-19. “I am not vaccinated against other diseases either, except when I travel to the tropics where it’s mandatory.”
Almost a third of Germans, 31%, said in a December poll they would not take a coronavirus vaccine, a number that rises to almost half in neighbouring France.
Many worry about side effects, fears that experts say are overblown and far outweighed by the risks of catching the virus. Concern not to stoke such fears has made Europe very cautious in giving permission for the new vaccines to be deployed.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel worries that vaccine scepticism could block the path out of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people across the continent, devastated economies and confined millions to their homes.
“If more than 40% or 50% of people refuse a coronavirus vaccine then we’ll be wearing masks for a very long time,” she told German lawmakers in a debate last year, referring to the very high levels of take-up needed to stop the virus spreading.
Baden-Wuerttemberg, home to both successful companies like Mercedes-maker Daimler and a thriving culture of new age thinking, has long been wary of vaccines and its capital Stuttgart is the anti-vaxx movement’s ground zero.
According to the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, rates of vaccinations for common diseases in the state are among the lowest in Germany.
Polling by Erfurt University shows the state has some of the lowest levels of trust in vaccines in general, and some of the lowest levels of willingness to take a COVID vaccine.
Much of the explanation for that lies in a long tradition of individualism and regional pride, says Michael Blume, an academic who has done extensive research on esoteric movements.
Even in the 19th century, when southern Germany was nominally independent from the newly-created German monarchy, vaccination was unpopular there, since it was seen as an imposition by triumphant Prussians from their capital in Berlin.
