Was it indifference, ignorance, or deliberate harshness? In any case, Bavaria’s Ministry of Health decreed in November that even unvaccinated children from twelve were no longer allowed to go to the cinema, museum or zoo. Although they couldn’t be fully vaccinated by their twelfth birthday – there was no vaccine approved for children at the time.
One example among many of how the rights of children and young people have been dealt with since the beginning of the Corona crisis. Almost nowhere were schools closed for as long in 2021 with reference to the pandemic as in Germany. Primary schools, for example, 32 days – compared to eleven days on average for all OECD countries. In the first wave in March 2020, playgrounds were even cordoned off with a tape recorder.
If children were hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, the harsh measures could have been understood. Or if there were no alternatives to contain the corona dynamic. But even if the incidences among under 15-year-olds rose sharply this spring and have since been significantly higher than those in adults, they recently made up less than four percent of all hospital patients. And while the children had to sit at home for months, the corona rules for adults were almost nowhere as lax as in Germany, as the Ifo Institute recently pointed out: no nationwide curfews with a narrow radius around their own place of residence, for a long time none at all Home office is compulsory – and then not nearly as strictly enforced as in France, for example, which compensated for the much shorter school closings.
Hundreds of thousands of adults were able to celebrate Carnival in a crowded place this autumn, while daycare lantern parades fell flat and children were appealed to please refrain from the Halloween tours through the neighborhood because of Corona. By whom? Among other things, from the Bavarian Ministry of Health. The fact that it makes big headlines when the president of a Bundesliga club warns of the economic consequences of ghost games, but not when many universities have long since gone into a de facto lockdown, is as much a reflection of our society as it is Spiegel-Report from spring: The federal government does not want to prescribe an explicit corona test obligation for all employees, it said, “because it is about bodily harm that would be necessary in the event of a forced smear test”. At the time, all students had to have themselves tested several times a week – which, by the way, is one of the main reasons why their incidences soared so one-sided.
The elders lose too
“Sometimes I ask myself whether we have not taken the next step by closing schools and universities in an ever-increasing generation conflict,” said the President of the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Anja Steinbeck, recently. Whether it’s the climate crisis, national debt or the pension system: all the time, the elderly were doing business at the expense of the younger ones. “Now Corona. We post to the debts of the young generation and prevent them from being able to prepare as well as possible for the future we have created. “
But not only the very young are the losers of the Corona crisis. The very old are too. The over 80-year-olds who are most at risk from Corona. During the first and second waves, the residents of many retirement and nursing homes were barely able to leave their rooms or receive visitors. Even so, the virus gradually crept into their age group and resulted in unprecedented deaths last winter and spring. Because although politics had imposed a lot of restrictions on the young, it had failed to protect the elderly. Learning effects did not materialize, however: the boosting of the elderly who were vaccinated early was overslept in the summer and it was only decided that nursing staff should be vaccinated after the fourth wave had long since swept back into the homes. In addition, most health ministries still do not record the vaccination status of residents; Many relatives of the elderly report that they again begged in vain on the phone for home visits for vaccinations. Meanwhile, many 40-year-olds are boosted just three months after the second vaccination.
Because where there are so many losers, there must of course also be winners – as far as one can say in a pandemic. At least seen relatively speaking, you can: The winners are those in between, especially people from 30 or 40 and those without schoolchildren.
Why? Because with each additional year of life they carry a higher risk of getting seriously ill with Covid-19, most of the time they were spared the really severe restrictions. They could go on to work if they wanted, they could cultivate their friendships, go on trips. They didn’t have to worry about looking after their children and at the same time enduring the pressure in the office. For many of them, the most annoying thing was not going to a restaurant or shopping trip during the lockdowns. To this day, very few of them have to wear masks all day at work like children at school.
After all, adults have recently had to be tested in order to be allowed to go to work – but only the unvaccinated. Why now? Because politicians have long thought that it would be enough to build up the appropriate test pressure in children and adolescents, and the vaccination pressure at the same time. What worked out excellently for the age group of students: Although they themselves are hardly threatened by a serious Covid 19 disease, their vaccination rate climbed to over 90 percent in record time.
Which is logical when especially the boys, who need a lot of social contacts, are taken away from them. They wanted to get their everyday life back through the vaccination. Your age-appropriate everyday life. Because the clock is ticking for the boys. For them, one or two Corona years mean the loss of irretrievable life experiences that you only have at a certain age and on certain occasions such as school trips, high school balls or university introductory weeks.
An urgency that the middle-aged, protected from the deprivation of participation of the young, do not feel. Which is why the toughest vaccine skeptics can be found in their ranks. And so it is not surprising that 40 to 70-year-olds are among those who get the loudest outrage when carnival or football are then restricted.
How did this imbalance come about? I think the answer is actually so simple that it hurts. Because the middle ages keep the economy going. And because it is they who have the most to say in this country. They protest loudest and most powerfully when something goes against their interests. Most politicians belong directly to this age group. You make the Corona decisions and align them with your own realities of life. With this accusation, am I not further contributing to the social division that many have seen growing so dramatically since the beginning of the Corona crisis? And is what I write still true at all – when politicians have in the meantime discussed a general vaccination requirement and even kept schools open at incidences of 400 and more?
Participation is not a reason for vaccination
I believe that we will only be able to overcome it if we clearly identify the dual generation conflict and its causes. The fact that the schools are still open only shows that their month-long closings were intended purely for the benefit of others – because most adults were not yet vaccinated. The imbalance has not diminished – while some of the children were on early Christmas holidays and teachers’ associations were already unaware of school closings, clubs were still open. Reminders from the Standing Vaccination Commission that the right of children to participate in society should not be linked to their vaccination status are being ignored. Few federal states stick to it. Many don’t care.
Bavaria, for example, raised the limit to twelve years and three months when the pressure became too great because of its 2G rule for twelve-year-olds – only for a short grace period. In January 2022, 2G for twelve-year-olds will also be introduced in restaurants, during sports or in music schools.
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