In this country, partisanship, age and level of education are predictors of who refuses to get a vaccine against Covid-19 in all its variants, or who is skeptical about the severity or the danger of the disease. Even though more people are now willing to get the shot, attitudes have hardened among those who don’t, encouraged by a never-ending stream of conspiracy theories or ideological battle cries by influencers on the far Right and conservative media. Refusal has also intensified for many during recent discussions of vaccination mandates, with multiple law suits filed against the Biden administration’s vaccination requirements. Deeply republican states have imposed policies that ban vaccine mandates or prohibit requiring proof of vaccination.

Vaccination levels are also low among those who have difficulties accessing vaccination opportunities in rural areas, who lack transporation or time off from work because every penny of income is essential and cannot be endangered. So there are structural variables of access and economics, independent of ideological considerations.

The third group of unvaccinated people are those among us who have no choice due to pre-existing conditions or compromised immune systems. If you consider that 15% of the world’s population lives with disabilities (some of which preclude vaccination) according to the World Health Organization, we are taking huge numbers of people whose only protection can come from those who surround them and behave accordingly. And that number does not even include those under active treatment for cancer or other life threatening diseases at any given point in time.

Those who refuse vaccination on ideological grounds often insist that they have a “natural right” of self determination and if that freedom includes the endangerment of others, so be it. Conspiracy theories about “chip implantation” or some such aside, there is an underlying agreement among vaccine skeptics that disease is a process of natural selection, where the strong will live and the weak will be culled. No need to listen to the (deeply mistrusted) science selling the advantages of vaccination. Solidarity with the young, the old, the sick is simply off the table in groups that believe in nothing but individualism and the “survival of the fittest.” In some cases religious considerations about G-d’s will or beckoning paradise add to the determination to carry vaccination refusal as a political flag. Above all, it is about “freedom” to reject the state’s interference with your own body (unless you are a woman, when decisions about bodily integrity are ripped out of your hands in case of pregnancy. Yesterday’s opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg in the NYT (linked above) was brilliant in showing the contradiction.)

In Europe we see additional variants on the theme. Within the far Right there is an explicit anti-Semitic streak that associates vaccinations with sinister Jewish plans for world domination, making an extra buck or at least a push away from the “natural.” Cartoons like the one below are from another era (published by 3rd Reich vaccination opponents in The Stürmer in 1933)), yet deeply embedded in contemporary neo-Nazi discourse.

There is also, however, a different group of German, Swiss and Austrian vaccine deniers who have previously not allied with the far Right. These are often educated middle-class citizens (more than half of them have finished their university education, and 67% consider themselves to be middle class, 23% of the surveyed said they had cast their ballots for the Greens in Germany’s 2017 federal election. Eighteen percent voted for the Left party and 15% for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and they are in their 40s and 50s.(Ref.)

There are many educators and medical professionals among them, who swear by homeopathy or are adherents of the Rudolf Steiner/ Waldorf School movement around anthroposophy. The German South-West is a stronghold of the anthroposophical movement.

Officially, educators and administrations of Waldorf Schools are not prohibiting inoculations; however if you look at the rates in which kids in these institutions are inoculated for dangerous childhood diseases like the measles or whooping cough, you find the numbers way below the national average.

What lies beneath their vaccination refusal, now extended to the current Covid pandemic? Historically (and particularly during the third Reich) people considered a strong immune system to be sufficient to ward off disease, and that system was created and sustained by a romanticized “natural living,” a diet free of poison, physical exertion in sunlight and fresh air. All things modern – large cities, poor immigrants, technology and mass culture were seen as the enemy of health, external agents poisoning the immune system and sickening the body.

Rudolf Steiner added to that a theory rooted in occultism. He preached that humans reincarnate in ever new bodies. (Note, I do not judge the belief held by billions on this planet that reincarnation is part of the life cycle. I do have problems with the specifics touted by Steiner attached to his philosophy.) Only high fever in a child’s body allowed reincarnated kids to take root in that new space, which until then was dominated by the mother’s “protein” which needed to be replaced by the child’s own “protein.” Only then could emerge a true representation of this new person’s identity. Furthermore, illness has special meaning in this never-ending cycle of re-incarnation. It educates us to the fact of what has gone wrong in a previous life and provides karmic balance for earlier misbehavior. (Steiner even named specific illnesses for specific misdeeds – I’m not going there.)

There was an additional racist element present in his theorizing as well. Bacteria and viruses were considered of demonic nature, specifically the astral demons and putrescence of earlier, “inferior peoples” – the Mongols, for example, who carried their foul nature to the Germanic nations in their mass migrations. (No, I am not making this up. (Ref. To find his own words, go here.)

The new version for the current epidemic, in its extreme form, states that vaccination prevents you from receiving the karmic insights brought by the messenger disease. You might protect your body, but your soul will not be able to grow. Should you die, the healing experience for your soul will put you on fast track in the next life, so nothing is lost. Healing is all well and good, but suffering has a place in the world that is irreplaceable for spiritual growth. (Note, this approach is a legally recognized field of study in Germany for medical doctors who want to specialize in this sub- discipline.)

And before you shake your head and wonder who would subscribe to this, demonstrations against vaccination have drawn up to 40.000 people in individual cities on a given weekend, mixing Querdenker (the equivalent of Qanon), neo-Nazis and Steiner adherents. A useful article from the Council for European Studies (in English) on the history of the movement can be found here. Generalized science aggressions has morphed into increasingly violent behavior – hospital personnel, schools, doctors who offer inoculation, and even bystanders have been attacked and in one case killed.

I find it remarkable how in times of crisis all the long-held prejudices, stereotypes and nationally rooted beliefs make an outspoken come-back. Anti-Semitism and stereotyping esotericism, buried deep after 1945, are raising their ugly head. Racism in this country is no longer subdued, but proudly presented in calls for a return to the good-ole-times, with racial hierarchies re-established and intact. Simply asking people to put their beliefs aside is not going to cut it. If the only way out from the danger of the pandemic and new viral mutations is world-wide vaccination, then countries have to come together and impose vaccination mandates, legal requirements that no-one can escape other than for medical reasons. It has been done before. (Since 1809 in the U.S., 1807 in Germany.) It can be done again.

There’s a Drop of Hope, though, from the Francis Crick Institute in London. Their vaccination center had 12 international artists in residence who wrote poetry about inoculation collected under above title. You can find the poems here and the intro explains the interactive poetry project. Sensible, moving and perceptive takes on vaccination.

1807 was also the year this Beethoven piece was written (or transcribed from his violin concerto op. 61.)

Brooding photographs were taken late yesterday. Should reincarnation occur against scientific odds, I’ll put in a request to be a tree. Preferably not at aspen, though, I’ve done enough trembling in this life time. Red chestnut would be nice. Oak will do, too.