Analysis – Saturday, 8 October 2022

Losing Fear Equals Insufficient Vaccination
And numbers keep going up

When infection numbers are high but mortality is perceived low because it has not changed much, then a disease is no longer seen as dangerous. This is currently the case with Covid-19 in the USA, in Germany and Tunisia. To a certain degree in France too, although here, mortality is clearly on the rise but a far cry from its former peaks.

Even a rising number of people who end up in intensive care – as is the case in Germany, Washington State, France and possibly Tunisia (but there are no dependable numbers) – does not deter from this perception because these people live at the edge of society (mostly the old and chronically ill) and they have been kept away from the public anyway for fear of serious complications.

The now slowly emerging winter waves in Europe and later in the US (ars technica) are not likely to shake this perception by much, even with increasing stress to our economy and our hospitals. The respectful fear of the last two years has definitely evaporated.

So everything is fine. After all, the 90% can live a life that resembles the one during past strong winter flu waves.

Well, not so.
Apart from the 10% who cannot (and may never be able to) participate fully in public life, the loss of fear means less vaccination. Vaccination rates may be going up but for the boosters to be protective for society, we would need 5-10x more people getting their daily jabs.