She is “anti-drugs and anti-stings.” She has never had the flu shot. Her name is Elisabeth Verkuijl, but everyone has called her Barry for so long, since the war, that she no longer even knows whether her real first name is written with an ‘s’ or a ‘z’. She is now ninety. She sits bent over in her chair, a small black handbag on the table in front of her. “I told my doctor: I don’t take them anymore. It makes me sick. I have to take paracetamol to recover from my meds. Now I don’t take anything anymore and I feel great.”
But she is vaccinated. “Because if I don’t, I’m doing another harm. That’s why I did it. Not for myself.”
She sits opposite her bridge partner Marianne, a generation younger, who prefers not to put his last name in the newspaper. “She’s still better at the game than I am,” she says of Barry. She herself made a small slam last week with 28 points. “Like this. Yes.”
It is Wednesday afternoon, they are sitting at a table by the window in the conservatory of restaurant De Bosrand in Lage Vuursche, a village on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, surrounded by more than 1,100 hectares of forest. The vaccination rate in this municipality, Baarn, runs parallel with the National average. It’s foggy outside, but it’s not raining.
“Are we going to give our opinion?” Marianne asks Barry when the reporter has just checked in.
“I haven’t heard anything,” says Barry. “I am deaf.”
“Oh, you’re deaf.” To the reporter: “Would you like to sit down? I’m not going to be a subscriber.”
New? Does she already have another newspaper? “I thought so, yes. I have two.”
The question, for them and a number of other people here, is whether we can still be kind to each other in a society that is increasingly divided into vaccinated and unvaccinated. The measures that were announced this week (and will take effect this Saturday) distinguish between the two groups more than before. Does the vaccinated curse the unvaccinated now that he has to go to the supermarket with a mask again? Does the unvaccinated feel cut off from the world of the vaccinated now that she no longer enters the hospitality industry, gyms and perhaps even the office?
In other words: are we still doing this ‘together’, as the government has been encouraging since the start of the corona crisis? Is there, where Rutte called to Tuesday, even “a little bit of understanding” and “a little bit of leniency” for each other? Or is there a growing resentment against the ‘others’?
“No,” says Marianne. Then suddenly with a broad, almost mischievous smile: “Against the wappies, yes, a little.” But she estimates that this is only “4 percent” of the Dutch. She can understand other motives. “Yes, not – excuse me, but not when they say, The Lord God takes care of us, because then I get a little pissed off. The Lord God will take care of you if you also take care of yourself.”
Who will be left then? “The fearful. There are a lot of anxious people, you know. Afraid of needles, for example. Or that they cannot tolerate a vaccine.” And now that she is on a roll: it does not help that ‘our fellow countrymen’ are not properly informed. “I often visit Turkish people at home – my daughter is married to a Turkish man – and the Dutch TV is not on there. Not really. I have never heard that Rutte has been on the Turkish channels, and I think that is such negligence. Those doctors who wear white coats in deprived areas went to market to provide information: I thought that was great.”
Two camps
Two camps arise, says thirties Maaike, who also prefers not to see her last name in the newspaper, “because people are so hard on each other”. She is sitting outside on the patio with a friend and a cocker spaniel, Tambi. Not because they can’t provide a QR code: the dog is “too excited” to sit inside.
“Not for a second” did she doubt herself whether she wanted to be vaccinated. “I was very happy to be allowed to.” Understanding choices other than hers? “Yes, yes.” And she has no problem with the new measures. “We should never have revoked that mask obligation. That is such a mild measure. Why are we making a fuss about that?”
It is not the role of politicians, she believes, to be persuasive. She should have been more informed. “There are still groups in the Netherlands that are insufficiently informed.”
Back inside, in the corner with the large armchairs, is Jada Engelberts from Utrecht’s working-class neighborhood Ondiep (with a characteristic accent: “Can you hear that?”) with her niece Laura Dannenburg. Both have doubted about vaccination. “I still want children,” says Laura, who studies in Utrecht. “Of course they say it’s safe, but you do hear stories. A girl who got thrombosis, for example. I’ve seen that in the news a few times now.” With the vaccines of AstraZeneca and Janssen this spring there was indeed a very rare chance of serious thrombosis; since June, vaccines from those two manufacturers are no longer administered to younger age groups.
Laura herself was convinced by her brother, a doctor in training, and her grandmother, who said: just let it be done, otherwise you can’t come with us on holiday or out for dinner. But friends and acquaintances of theirs have made a different choice. “Especially many women under the age of thirty,” says Jada. “At least, that’s how I experience it in my environment.”
When asked about their understanding of the different points of view, the two women themselves still go back and forth a lot. Jada says she thinks the new measures are “very bad” for the unvaccinated. “Because they oblige you to get a shot.” And when we’re all vaccinated, she says, “something else will come up.”
Laura: “Maybe everyone should have a third vaccination again.”
“And a fourth, and a fifth…”
“Or there will be a new variant that we are not protected against.”
But, they also say: young unvaccinated people are “walking around.” Laura: “All those student houses are full every weekend. It’s really big parties.” And when it comes to the fact that operations are postponed because there are all people with corona in the ICU, Jada says: “Yes, that is also scandalous, isn’t it. Really bad.”
She cared for her father for three weeks, in the risk group because of his age and heart ailments. “He could no longer walk, he had a lunge, could no longer eat by himself. Very stuffy. We thought: will he make it? And then you hear on the street afterwards: it’s just the flu.” Everything, she says, is now “double camp”.
And then forgivingly conclude that it is difficult for everyone. Laura: “I also understand that the government finds it difficult to take the right measures. We have never experienced such a corona.” Jada: „We are all doing it for the first time. The common people, but also the prime minister. We are all being put on the spot.”
Forgot phone
Jan and Agatha Scholten have settled down with their granddaughter on the terrace across the street, at pancake house De Vuursche Boer. They come from Zevenhuizen, South Holland, and all three have just ordered chocolate milk with whipped cream. Why outside and not inside, on this autumn day? Agatha has forgotten her phone and therefore does not have her QR code with her. Jan: “Then you have to be sporty.”
They are a little louder, and especially Jan, than other people present. “I have been a farmer. We have always had chickens, we look at it slightly differently than the burger on the tenth floor.” He means: then you have had to deal with virus control more often and you know that you have to intervene quickly. He therefore has no understanding of the minority that has not yet been vaccinated. “We have acquaintances who have not been vaccinated. I also say to that: that they are a bit stupid.”
“My grandfather says everything he thinks,” says Jan’s granddaughter, equal parts apologetic and endearing.
Jan: “But he often thinks before he says.”
The granddaughter: “But then you’ll tell.”
Jan’s wife Agatha starts about SGP leader Kees van der Staaij, who spoke at the talk show on Tuesday evening after the press conference. On 1 and especially emphasized everyone’s freedom of choice in the vaccination debate. “And he is against the corona measures, because he believes that people are forced to vaccinate with them.”
“Suppose”, says Jan, “he gets corona. And he is carried out between six plankies. That’s possible, huh? Then he comes up to our dear Lord, because he raves about it, and he says: oh, what a fool you are. For I have given you the tools and the knowledge to counter this. And now you come knocking here. You just sit in the corner and wait until there is room for you.”
The couple has seen up close how corona has clogged the healthcare system. Jan, his right hand on his wife’s arm for a moment: „She has ‘had’ a brother – an ugly word, eh, he had MS. Every Sunday I went for a walk with him. At some point that was no longer the case. He had problems with his calf and already walked with a walker. In March, he had a blood constriction in his foot. But a real surgery in the hospital was postponed all the time. They never had time for him. Until his foot started to turn completely black.”
Agatha: “It was already too far advanced and he could no longer be helped. That did not have everything to do with corona, but what.”
He died in July this year. But angry? No not at all. “A bit of frustration,” Agatha says softly.
“You can get angry about anything,” says Jan. “But then you’re ruining your life.”
That is also the main conclusion of Marianne and Barry, the bridge partners who are inside.
“Do you know what it is?” says Barry – who, despite her hearing difficulties, fits into the conversation smoothly. “People who hate have themselves with it. As you get older you will realize that. That it all makes no sense. I now have that wisdom. That’s the advantage of being old. That is the only advantage of being old. For the rest it is terrible, because every day you think you are going to die.”
“It’s work,” says Marianne. “I think it works.”
She can only get angry at herself now, says Barry. “If I’ve forgotten where something is, or something. But not on other people.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 6 November 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 6, 2021
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