At least the Covid-19 primary vaccination has so far received a little over 62 percent of the population, plus almost 700,000 recovered. Given these data, it is clear that Austria is still far from a kind of “herd immunity”. “Maybe we are only ten percent wrong,” said complexity researchers Stefan Thurner and Peter Klimek about the APA. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of targeted campaigns to convince vaccine skeptics. Each group would need its own strategies.
Thurner emphasized that even if one were only a little way away from the proportion of largely immunized people in Austria, which would let the current fourth wave ebb, “the increasing number of cases” shows that this is not the case yet. In view of the more contagious Delta variant and the relatively large reservoir of still unprotected people, the virus is now showing itself to be quite successful again. Also because the epidemiologically “best time” will come to an end with summer.
The herd immunity, which is often longed for, begins in classic textbooks at an immunity rate of around 50 percent, which offers a certain collective protection. At 70 percent vaccination coverage, there should be hardly any more outbreaks. With these assumptions one always assumes that every person has the same number of contacts.
However, this view has been outdated for several years, which is not least shown by the corona pandemic. The herd protection is rather “a very soft concept”, according to the head of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH), which is also part of the Covid forecast consortium. Even if 30 or 35 percent of the population is unprotected, larger outbreaks could still occur.
One thing is clear: the more people are and remain unvaccinated, the higher the chance of an even more pronounced fourth wave. However, the number of infections would no longer go to astronomical heights, as with pessimistic forecasts last autumn and winter. “We are already far enough with the vaccination,” emphasized Klimek. The goal now must be to distribute the number of infections that will inevitably occur with the current vaccination rate as well as possible over time so as not to exceed the hospital’s capacity.
According to the scientist from the CSH and the Medical University of Vienna, the fact that vaccination progress fell asleep in this country in the summer surprised many experts. It is surprising that in the past few weeks there has been no more professionally organized persuasion work in various groups of skeptics or among people who, despite the wide range of offers, did not come to the vaccination for whatever reason. Thurner: “I have never seen a PR company that has started a vaccination campaign. There are professionals out there” who also know how to reach people who do not consume traditional media. If you search for a new car online only once, you will automatically be bombarded with advertising for the product for weeks. There are very well-functioning approaches to “microtargeting”, emphasized Klimek.
In Denmark, for example, you have to actively cancel your vaccination appointment, Thurner said. So you can at least pick up those people for whom the organization is otherwise too much effort.
Although many low-threshold vaccination offers were created in Austria in the summer, there was apparently no emphasis on publicizing them. Now, in many cases, the “brutal variant” remains, with 1G or 2G regulations to set incentives through participation in night catering or elsewhere and to build up pressure. In order for all of this to increase the vaccination rate significantly, public discussions and information efforts should have started earlier, according to the scientists: “The rules of the game have not been clarified.”