Why Europe's fight against the pandemic is about to get much more dangerous

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Tue, 2021-12-14 17:28 — mike kraft

Paris (CNN) "Despite months of persuasion, despite intensive media campaigns, despite discussions in various media we have not succeeded in convincing enough people to get vaccinated." Those were the words of former Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg last month as he announced the first nationwide vaccine mandate in Europe.

Now, Germany looks set to follow where Austria has led.

Others have made vaccines mandatory for parts of the population and imposed restrictions that increasingly explicitly target the unvaccinated, as Europe battles the twin challenges of sharply rising Covid figures and plateauing vaccination rates.

Nearly one year into the EU's vaccination campaign, and with around one in three Europeans still unvaccinated, it is not so much hesitancy that European governments are now facing as outright opposition, with the danger that as governments get tougher so too will popular anger towards them.

Only 19% of Europeans include their government among their most trusted sources of reliable information on Covid-19 vaccines, according to a survey conducted in May 2021 by the European Barometer, a collection of cross-country public opinion surveys conducted regularly on behalf of the EU's institutions.

Even before the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy in Europe was strongly correlated to a populist distrust of mainstream parties and governments. ...

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