The head of Health fails in his proposal to immunize everyone over 60 years of age
Germans will not be forced to immunize against the coronavirus. The Bundestag, the German parliament, today rejected by a large majority the introduction of compulsory vaccination for people over 60 years of age, an initiative that had come from several deputies from the government coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) . Only 296 deputies voted in favor of the bill, while 378 voted against it and 9 abstained. The proposal had received the express support of the federal chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his head of Health, Karl Lautherbach. However, party discipline had been renounced for the vote and parliamentarians could vote according to their conscience. The vote in the lower house had been preceded by a heated debate in which Christian Democrats (CDU) and Bavarian Social Christians (CSU) had mostly expressed their rejection of compulsory vaccination.
But his proposal did not go ahead either. An initiative that the Conservatives proposed as a compromise also failed in the German Parliament, since it obtained only 172 votes in favor and 497 against, also with nine abstentions. Two other votes, this time to completely reject any compulsory vaccination, the first proposed by the vice-president of the Liberals, Wolfgang Kubicki, and the second by the ultra-nationalists of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), also received the majority rejection of the chamber, with only 85 and 79 votes in favor, respectively. The Federal Minister of Health and specialist in immunology, Karl Lautherbach, was extremely disappointed by the result obtained by his initiative. “This will only complicate the fight against the pandemic next fall,” he said on Twitter.
In the previous two-hour debate, Lautherbach had appealed vehemently to Conservative MPs to approve his proposal to mandate compulsory vaccination of those over 60. “Today is the decisive day. Do not leave us in the lurch and at least assume your responsibility », he appealed to the CDU and CSU caucus. On behalf of these, his parliamentary spokesman for Health, Tino Sorge, argued that his rejection is based on the fact that it is not known which variant of the coronavirus will be dominant in the fall and whether the vaccines now available will be effective against it. For his part, Kubicki defended the rejection of all compulsory vaccination, assuring that it leads to herd immunity and recalling that the German health system has not been overwhelmed at any time during the pandemic. “The vaccine is to protect yourself, not to protect others,” said the liberal vice president after stating that the vaccine does not protect against contagion. It is not the task of politics and it is also unconstitutional to force people to be vaccinated to protect others.
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