Maybrit Illner (ZDF): Further corona easing? "It is still dying today"

Maybrit Illner discusses vaccination sequences in the corona pandemic in her broadcast on ZDF. A vaccination offer for children and adolescents is particularly important.

Berlin – Under the title “Vaccinated, tested, recovered – when is the pandemic over?” Maybrit Illner discussed a lot with her guests on Thursday evening (May 27th, 2021) about vaccination sequences and too little about new perspectives. Guests on ZDF were the Governing Mayor of Berlin Michael Müller (SPD), the science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar, the Neukölln family doctor Sibylle Katzenstein, the Youtuber Mirko Drotschmann and the pharmaceutical manager and virologist Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff.

Ranga Yogeshwar pointed out right in the opening round that rich countries would do too little to combat the corona pandemic. What was meant was an international commitment, especially for poorer countries. However, Maybrit Illner initially directed the conversation to what Germany is doing for its own population, with a focus on the planned vaccination offers for children and adolescents. Michael Müller emphasized that it was “right to open up this perspective” and, in view of the ever-decreasing incidence, even criticized the still valid contact restrictions in private areas, which are difficult to justify in view of the current situation.

Maybrit Illner on ZDF: parents’ willingness to vaccinate is overestimated

As a result, there were a few dissenting voices from the group. Yogeshwar saw a process of repression at work in the all too positive view and emphasized: “People still die today.” Sibylle Katzenstein warned that the parents’ willingness to vaccinate was overestimated and thus raised doubts about the idea of vaccinating the general population as quickly as possible.

In this direction, Illner’s subsequent question about how much one should worry about those people who do not want to be vaccinated. Instead of addressing the conflict between those who would like to be vaccinated and those who oppose the vaccination, which was evoked by the moderator, Yogeshwar made a second attempt to draw attention to more pressing problems and to bring up global inequality in the fight against pandemics.

Youtuber Mirko Drotschmann warns Maybrit Illner (ZDF) of a conflict in vaccine distribution

Illner described this renewed advance by Yogeshwar as a “super interesting hint”, but this did not prevent her from moderating it again quickly in order to come back to the situation in Germany. Drotschmann, known on Youtube as ‘MrWissen2go’, warned of a generation conflict in the allocation of vaccines, while a well-rehearsed article raised the question of whether the risk of a vaccination for children and adolescents was proportionate to the benefit.

Rübsamen-Schaeff then took the position, which is not surprising for a pharmaceutical manager, that they should all be vaccinated in order to exclude them as carriers. At the same time, of course, the virologist opposed the lifting of patent protection, which could decentralize and thus accelerate vaccine production. In their statements that many countries could not implement the production of the novel vaccines and that the high prices in the industrialized nations would help finance the distribution of vaccines in poorer countries, they expressed primarily Eurocentric arrogance and interest in profit.

Yogeshwar noted that large quantities of vaccines are also produced outside of Europe and that China and India in particular have donated millions of vaccine doses to other countries, while the industrialized nations continue to only look at their own populations.

Maybrit Illner on ZDF: Discussions about the corona pandemic are far from being exhaustive

With this, his attempts to develop a broader perspective on the pandemic were finally successful and Illner also abandoned its constant redirection to Germany. Some positions could be expressed in the program that are rarely heard in the race for vaccination appointments and the largely nationally oriented discussion in Germany.

Katzenstein made it clear that the question of distribution was also about ensuring that the last German is not vaccinated “before 2 percent of Somalis are vaccinated”. Yogeshwar criticized that the global south only receives vaccines from countries like Russia and India, while the northern countries keep their patents for themselves and advocated not always pursuing economic interests, but rather exercising “global empathy”. Here it became clear that the discussions about the pandemic were by no means exhaustive and that they often lose their tiring character when new perspectives are presented that extend beyond national borders. It is to be hoped that this knowledge will increasingly find its way into German talk shows. (Jendrik Walendy)