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Vaccinating just the vulnerable isn't enough for some countries, they want full herd immunity. For example, the Polish minister of health gave a press conferenc
by Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Vaccinating just the vulnerable isn't enough for some countries, they want full herd immunity. For example, the Polish minister of health gave a press conference last week in which he said that restrictions cannot be lifted until half of the country's population has been vaccinated, and he expects that to take all of 2021. I suspect that he was only saying out loud what other EU countries have been tacitly planning for.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoOnce hospitalisation rates fall the press will be all over them if they don't open up. Most of Western Europe has been struggling to get people to comply as it is.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoLast spring I might have agreed, but mass resistance to restrictions never materialized. Protests have never attracted more than a fringe of conspiracy theorists etc. As for the press, the media in Poland is nearly wholly controlled by the government, and so will not necessarily challenge the minister of health. Then there are countries like Finland where politics is consensus-based, and so is the press, so once all parties have broadly agreed on restrictions, it is unseemly to raise objections. Apparently politicians in many EU countries have decided that they are politically vulnerable if they open up, not if they simply keep the status quo of restrictions going. As for "struggling to get people to comply", actually EU countries have been quite effective in ensuring that restaurants and theatres ordered to close stay closed. There are some countries elsewhere on earth where business owners have been able to bribe the authorities to look the other way, but that doesn't happen in EU countries.