My booster that doesn’t count in Berlin
Berlin – After all, I’m out of the pandemic first. I thought so at the end of November. I hadn’t left my apartment for 14 days because I caught Corona, despite double vaccinations. I’m sorry to start all over again in my column.
But in the last few days I have often thought of the feeling of relief that had set in after the fever went away. I was behind me. And I didn’t have to think about further vaccinations at first. My GP congratulated me on the best booster man can get. My immune system had got to know the virus itself, probably in the Delta variant, it no longer needs any further reminder of what the spines look like on its surface.
The German corona bureaucracy
To be sure, I called Christine, the president of the German Society for Immunology, and wanted her to go to see if I needed a third injection after all. This is really not necessary after a vaccination breakthrough, she said. “When it came into contact with the virus, the body got out everything it could.” In six months I can think about it again. Or have my antibodies measured.
I am happy. But I didn’t expect the German Corona bureaucracy.
On Tuesday I watched the broadcast of a press conference with the Senator for Health Ulrike Gote and the governing mayor Franziska Giffey. New corona rules for Berlin were presented again. In order to slow down the spread of the Omikron variant a little, one should prove a status called “2G plus” in restaurants, cinemas and theaters from the weekend. The plus can be met with a negative corona test. You don’t have to meet it when you’re boosted. This is the new super status that makes life easier. In Bavaria, I read, get it even people like me die after two vaccinations.
A colleague was at the press conference and agreed with the senator whether this also applies to Berlin. No, she said, and smiled.
She knows the problem, there are “many variants”, just her. People who just die didn’t follow the order: vaccination one, two, three. Without infection before or in between. That messes up every rule! The only thing that counts as a booster in Berlin is at least three vaccinations per person, registered in the Corona warning app. The app has so far not been able to cope with all of these other cases, said the senator. There are no certificates.
A demand that has often been made in the course of the pandemic is: Listen to the science. Follow Science! It seems to apply as long as forms suitable for the state of research are available.
Then that is just not possible with participation
Franziska Giffey said at the press conference that one could not expect “waitresses” in Berlin to calculate who had been boosted. She sounded a little outraged. If you don’t stick to the new rule, then “it just doesn’t work with participation”, for example at a meal in a restaurant. In addition to the mayor, you can hear a woman cooking in the video, I don’t know if it was the health senator.
I come as my November relief turned into a slight resentment. That’s a feeling I wanted even less than the virus to get in the pandemic. Maybe I’ll go to Bavaria one day to have dinner.