7 ms·

Germany to Stop Free Covid-19 Tests in October

35 points by _Microft 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago
30% of the world population has been given a COVID shot [0]. We're a couple of months away from any need for emergency responses being over. I don't expect most of the emergency responses to actually end, that may never happen. But there is no emergency any more. It has emerged, been dealt with, and the world is now about to be in a Business as Usual state. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
- makomk 5y ago
  Only if no variant appears that has substantial vaccine escape. The thing is that if this is possible there's no level of vaccination that will stop this from happening because it's impossible to achieve herd immunity against the Delta variant and stop it from spreading using the current vaccines (they're just not effective enough at preventing people from catching and spreading the disease) - and uncontrolled spread through a widely vaccinated population resulting in strong selective pressure is pretty much the ideal scenario to cause that. Also, if countries aren't testing widely anymore they won't spot this happening because the detection of new variants relies on sequencing of positive test samples.
docdeek 5y ago
> But with 55% of the population fully vaccinated there have been calls to stop spending taxpayers' money on a subsidised scheme that now mainly benefits those who are not yet vaccinated even though vaccines are available for all. Something similar is happening in France: the tests are going to be available but no longer subsidized/covered by the state soon in an effort to encourage people to get vaccinated instead of relying on PCR test after PCR test to prove they haven’t got COVID.
- lazyjones 5y ago
  It's a flawed argument of course because vaccination does not prevent transmission - even if it occurs at a lower rate among vaccinated people, a vaccination cannot replace a test. So this is another reason to reject this kind of coercion.
  - croes 5y ago
    But at the moment vaccination prevents most cases of severe illness
    - jansan 5y ago
      That's personal risk. In Germany every person age 16 or above had the opportunity to get vaccinated.
  - bildung 5y ago
    People don't usually use these tests to prevent transmission, but to have a formal negative test result, as this is the entry ticket to many shops and services. A proof of vaccination provides the same, while also reducing transmission.
    - cies 5y ago
      A person tested negative should not be able to spread. A vaxed person may still spread. Where's your logic?
      - ketzu 5y ago
        > A person tested negative should not be able to spread. False-negative results exist.
      - bildung 5y ago
        A person tested negative has just not been proven positive, which is different from being proven negative. PCR test sensitivity can be as low as 70%. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.16.20066787 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.16.20066787 A vaccinated person may only spread if they are indeed infected, which is less common to begin with. Then, if they are indeed infected, the rate of transmission is much lower - as they usually don't develop heavy viral loads.
s9w 5y ago
A PCR test with a CT of 40 is about as good an instrument as a glass ball. Good for making them expensive, so fewer tests will be made. Next step will be limitations to groceries. At that point there'll either be war or mass suicide. Note that all protests against corona legislations are illegal in Germany.
TurboHaskal 5y ago
"Given that all vaccination is immediately available to all citizens, it is no longer justifiable that the federal government and therefore taxpayers cover the cost of all tests." The vaccine is also paid with taxpayer money and it is a personal decision to get vaccinated. The STIKO does not currently recommend the vaccine for pregnant or breastfeeding mothers. This reads like nothing but an attempt to put pressure on certain hesitant groups or maybe covering for the fact that the vaccines don't seem to be as effective as initially advertised to the laymen when it comes to the reduction of contagion risk.
- martin_a 5y ago
  Sometimes the state has to act for the greater good of everybody. Also there are long-existing rules for required vaccinations for children or if you plan to travel abroad. Nobody talks about that. This whole discussion is just some right-wing talking shit, stirring up uninformed people. To add something (more) useful: The vaccination will with very high chance prevent you from getting a serious case and therefore saving/keeping free resources in hospitals and immense costs for emergency care or prevent you from dying. Hundreds of millions of people are vaccinated around the earth. There's not a significant amount of people that have died because of the vaccination or did even have any serious complications. Most of the "complications" or just what you would expect if your body is having an immune reaction: I myself had cold-like symptoms for two days. That's all and that's to be expected. There are very likely no negative "long-term effects" of the vaccination. How should that even work? Vaccination is building anti-bodies to fight a disease, how can there even be any long-term effect?
  - s9w 5y ago
    The vax has an effectiveness of 40%, decreasing every day. This is not about health - not one can reasonably believe that anymore.
  - TurboHaskal 5y ago
    A proper state would make the vaccine mandatory instead of these lame coercion attempts. With delta, you will not reach anything close to herd immunity unless you vaccine about >=90% of the population. There is limited data on the relative safety of these new vaccines on <12 year olds.
jansan 5y ago
The government claims that the vaccination is voluntary. Yeah sure, just like work on Sunday afternoons was voluntary in Animal Farm: "...and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half." https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/orwell/animal-farm/ch06.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/tex...
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. One reason many people are skeptical of the vaccine is precisely because governments are trying to force it for everyone. The government would do a better job to make it freely available to all, than to try and force... that would have disabled anger and conspiracy theories (or at least a good part of them).
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    In Germany, vaccination is available freely and for all whom the vaccines have been approved for. I have the impression, this is the case in many countries in the EU and the US.
  - ketzu 5y ago
    > Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. Because they make an extremly heavy handed comparisson without making any point. > The government would do a better job to make it freely available to all Many did that, including Germany, and they still have the same problem. In the context of this article, the freely available vaccine is the starting point to limit free testing for everyone that could have gotten the vaccine.
irjustin 5y ago
Yeah this is largely expected as the world shifts to "living with COVID" like we do with the flu. Singapore (where I live) is shifting from going after 0 cases to measuring vaccination rates as the headline number sometime in Q4. Sadly, it will take lives those who defy vaccination and those who are innocently cannot take it, but as is, the world will reopen so changing how we measure happens accordingly.
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  > Yeah this is largely expected as the world shifts to "living with COVID" like we do with the flu. At least now, with working from home, idiots would not come over to my desk to cough all over me with their plague only because they felt pressure to be present.
skocznymroczny 5y ago
It's amazing to see how easy it's going to pass all these laws. All you had to do was to conjure an invisible enemy, spread the panic that everyone you encounter can be a threat (so better stay home, avoid contact and listen to what the nicely dressed person on TV tells you).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ketzu 5y ago
  > All you had to do Was get most of the worlds governments to cooperate with you, including the ones least willing to do so. Make people capable of detecting the seemingly invisible enemy either complicit, get rid of them or make chose your invisible enemy in a way so they will always make false detections! Either make most hospital staff complicit, or simulate lots of sick people in some way (some of which will have to die to make it convincing). You can turn up the statistical death number without problem, but the local properties need to be either semi consistent or the people need to be complicit. You should also do something to get people to have symptoms (like loss of smell) which are not that common so far. Lastly, the payoff for all of this simple setup is unclear. You can pass a law to restrict free Covid-19 testing? You can add another vaccine to the mandatory vaccines? I mean, I am sure there are some states that have extremly overbearing consequences law wise. But in the context of Germany? It is completely unclear to me why many governments should participate in this.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    The payoff is very clear. Every government loves a crisis because it allows them to pass laws which normally would come with a lot of societal pressure. The mere act of having to verify yourself when going into a mall, restaurant, bus, train gives enormous tracking and control capabilities. In a decade, people will forget why these measures were implemented, but they will still have to abide by them. Just like we still have to take our shoes off at the airport, can't take any liquids and can't have our families watch us board the plane. Well, simulating lots of sick people is very trivial, ever since the idea of asymptomatic disease came into play. Feel completely healthy? Better get tested! You could have entire populations being completely healthy, but the tests could still report diseases and you'd have an asymptomatic pandemic going on.
mandmandam 5y ago
I suppose someone needs to point out how weird it is that people with wide and strong immunity due to recovering from corona are not able to get an exemption from taking a vaccine. Especially now that we know vaccines don't prevent transmission. I can't figure out why this is talked about so rarely, maybe someone can explain it to me. My best guess is that it's similar "logic" to the lies about wearing masks in the first few months of last year, but even then I don't see the need.
kken 5y ago
You can downloads the statistical datasets for german vaccination compain here: https://impfdashboard.de/daten https://impfdashboard.de/daten
DavideNL 5y ago
I wonder if people who can’t get the vaccination for medical reasons are excluded…
- ketzu 5y ago
  According to the article, the current plan says yes: "The draft stipulates that people who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons like expectant women and children under 18 will continue to be entitled to subsidised tests."
- DavideNL 5y ago
  Apparently so: > Exceptions are planned for people who - for health reasons, for example - cannot be vaccinated or for whom there is no general vaccination recommendation (especially pregnant women and children and adolescents under 18). https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-ungeimpfte-muessen-ab-oktober-fuer-schnelltests-zahlen-a-b5039f7d-eae0-4dfa-bda1-e3cab6c795f9 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-ungeimpfte...

35 points by _Microft 5y ago

30% of the world population has been given a COVID shot [0]. We're a couple of months away from any need for emergency responses being over. I don't expect most of the emergency responses to actually end, that may never happen. But there is no emergency any more. It has emerged, been dealt with, and the world is now about to be in a Business as Usual state. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

makomk 5y ago
Only if no variant appears that has substantial vaccine escape. The thing is that if this is possible there's no level of vaccination that will stop this from happening because it's impossible to achieve herd immunity against the Delta variant and stop it from spreading using the current vaccines (they're just not effective enough at preventing people from catching and spreading the disease) - and uncontrolled spread through a widely vaccinated population resulting in strong selective pressure is pretty much the ideal scenario to cause that. Also, if countries aren't testing widely anymore they won't spot this happening because the detection of new variants relies on sequencing of positive test samples.

docdeek 5y ago

> But with 55% of the population fully vaccinated there have been calls to stop spending taxpayers' money on a subsidised scheme that now mainly benefits those who are not yet vaccinated even though vaccines are available for all. Something similar is happening in France: the tests are going to be available but no longer subsidized/covered by the state soon in an effort to encourage people to get vaccinated instead of relying on PCR test after PCR test to prove they haven’t got COVID.

lazyjones 5y ago
It's a flawed argument of course because vaccination does not prevent transmission - even if it occurs at a lower rate among vaccinated people, a vaccination cannot replace a test. So this is another reason to reject this kind of coercion.
- croes 5y ago
  But at the moment vaccination prevents most cases of severe illness
  - jansan 5y ago
    That's personal risk. In Germany every person age 16 or above had the opportunity to get vaccinated.
- bildung 5y ago
  People don't usually use these tests to prevent transmission, but to have a formal negative test result, as this is the entry ticket to many shops and services. A proof of vaccination provides the same, while also reducing transmission.
  - cies 5y ago
    A person tested negative should not be able to spread. A vaxed person may still spread. Where's your logic?
    - ketzu 5y ago
      > A person tested negative should not be able to spread. False-negative results exist.
    - bildung 5y ago
      A person tested negative has just not been proven positive, which is different from being proven negative. PCR test sensitivity can be as low as 70%. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.16.20066787 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.16.20066787 A vaccinated person may only spread if they are indeed infected, which is less common to begin with. Then, if they are indeed infected, the rate of transmission is much lower - as they usually don't develop heavy viral loads.

s9w 5y ago

A PCR test with a CT of 40 is about as good an instrument as a glass ball. Good for making them expensive, so fewer tests will be made. Next step will be limitations to groceries. At that point there'll either be war or mass suicide. Note that all protests against corona legislations are illegal in Germany.

TurboHaskal 5y ago

"Given that all vaccination is immediately available to all citizens, it is no longer justifiable that the federal government and therefore taxpayers cover the cost of all tests." The vaccine is also paid with taxpayer money and it is a personal decision to get vaccinated. The STIKO does not currently recommend the vaccine for pregnant or breastfeeding mothers. This reads like nothing but an attempt to put pressure on certain hesitant groups or maybe covering for the fact that the vaccines don't seem to be as effective as initially advertised to the laymen when it comes to the reduction of contagion risk.

martin_a 5y ago
Sometimes the state has to act for the greater good of everybody. Also there are long-existing rules for required vaccinations for children or if you plan to travel abroad. Nobody talks about that. This whole discussion is just some right-wing talking shit, stirring up uninformed people. To add something (more) useful: The vaccination will with very high chance prevent you from getting a serious case and therefore saving/keeping free resources in hospitals and immense costs for emergency care or prevent you from dying. Hundreds of millions of people are vaccinated around the earth. There's not a significant amount of people that have died because of the vaccination or did even have any serious complications. Most of the "complications" or just what you would expect if your body is having an immune reaction: I myself had cold-like symptoms for two days. That's all and that's to be expected. There are very likely no negative "long-term effects" of the vaccination. How should that even work? Vaccination is building anti-bodies to fight a disease, how can there even be any long-term effect?
- s9w 5y ago
  The vax has an effectiveness of 40%, decreasing every day. This is not about health - not one can reasonably believe that anymore.
- TurboHaskal 5y ago
  A proper state would make the vaccine mandatory instead of these lame coercion attempts. With delta, you will not reach anything close to herd immunity unless you vaccine about >=90% of the population. There is limited data on the relative safety of these new vaccines on <12 year olds.

jansan 5y ago

The government claims that the vaccination is voluntary. Yeah sure, just like work on Sunday afternoons was voluntary in Animal Farm: "...and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half." https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/orwell/animal-farm/ch06.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/tex...

southerntofu 5y ago
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. One reason many people are skeptical of the vaccine is precisely because governments are trying to force it for everyone. The government would do a better job to make it freely available to all, than to try and force... that would have disabled anger and conspiracy theories (or at least a good part of them).
- _ph_ 5y ago
  In Germany, vaccination is available freely and for all whom the vaccines have been approved for. I have the impression, this is the case in many countries in the EU and the US.
- ketzu 5y ago
  > Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. Because they make an extremly heavy handed comparisson without making any point. > The government would do a better job to make it freely available to all Many did that, including Germany, and they still have the same problem. In the context of this article, the freely available vaccine is the starting point to limit free testing for everyone that could have gotten the vaccine.

irjustin 5y ago

Yeah this is largely expected as the world shifts to "living with COVID" like we do with the flu. Singapore (where I live) is shifting from going after 0 cases to measuring vaccination rates as the headline number sometime in Q4. Sadly, it will take lives those who defy vaccination and those who are innocently cannot take it, but as is, the world will reopen so changing how we measure happens accordingly.

nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
> Yeah this is largely expected as the world shifts to "living with COVID" like we do with the flu. At least now, with working from home, idiots would not come over to my desk to cough all over me with their plague only because they felt pressure to be present.

skocznymroczny 5y ago

It's amazing to see how easy it's going to pass all these laws. All you had to do was to conjure an invisible enemy, spread the panic that everyone you encounter can be a threat (so better stay home, avoid contact and listen to what the nicely dressed person on TV tells you).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ketzu 5y ago
> All you had to do Was get most of the worlds governments to cooperate with you, including the ones least willing to do so. Make people capable of detecting the seemingly invisible enemy either complicit, get rid of them or make chose your invisible enemy in a way so they will always make false detections! Either make most hospital staff complicit, or simulate lots of sick people in some way (some of which will have to die to make it convincing). You can turn up the statistical death number without problem, but the local properties need to be either semi consistent or the people need to be complicit. You should also do something to get people to have symptoms (like loss of smell) which are not that common so far. Lastly, the payoff for all of this simple setup is unclear. You can pass a law to restrict free Covid-19 testing? You can add another vaccine to the mandatory vaccines? I mean, I am sure there are some states that have extremly overbearing consequences law wise. But in the context of Germany? It is completely unclear to me why many governments should participate in this.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  The payoff is very clear. Every government loves a crisis because it allows them to pass laws which normally would come with a lot of societal pressure. The mere act of having to verify yourself when going into a mall, restaurant, bus, train gives enormous tracking and control capabilities. In a decade, people will forget why these measures were implemented, but they will still have to abide by them. Just like we still have to take our shoes off at the airport, can't take any liquids and can't have our families watch us board the plane. Well, simulating lots of sick people is very trivial, ever since the idea of asymptomatic disease came into play. Feel completely healthy? Better get tested! You could have entire populations being completely healthy, but the tests could still report diseases and you'd have an asymptomatic pandemic going on.

mandmandam 5y ago

I suppose someone needs to point out how weird it is that people with wide and strong immunity due to recovering from corona are not able to get an exemption from taking a vaccine. Especially now that we know vaccines don't prevent transmission. I can't figure out why this is talked about so rarely, maybe someone can explain it to me. My best guess is that it's similar "logic" to the lies about wearing masks in the first few months of last year, but even then I don't see the need.

kken 5y ago

You can downloads the statistical datasets for german vaccination compain here: https://impfdashboard.de/daten https://impfdashboard.de/daten

DavideNL 5y ago

I wonder if people who can’t get the vaccination for medical reasons are excluded…

ketzu 5y ago
According to the article, the current plan says yes: "The draft stipulates that people who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons like expectant women and children under 18 will continue to be entitled to subsidised tests."
DavideNL 5y ago
Apparently so: > Exceptions are planned for people who - for health reasons, for example - cannot be vaccinated or for whom there is no general vaccination recommendation (especially pregnant women and children and adolescents under 18). https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-ungeimpfte-muessen-ab-oktober-fuer-schnelltests-zahlen-a-b5039f7d-eae0-4dfa-bda1-e3cab6c795f9 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-ungeimpfte...