That leaves 35 percent of the population that hasn’t had a vaccine (although this includes children under the age of 12). And Bremen’s large immigrant population also doesn’t fit easily with the narrative that migrants are suspicious of the vaccine. Another school of thought has it that experience of totalitarianism has led east Germans to value their liberty to a higher degree than west Germans do. On this reading, lockdowns that intruded into the privacy of people’s homes were the type of tone-deaf pandemic response that only west Germans could have come up with. Of course, explaining vaccine hesitancy through east German history alone is too reductive.

Source: The Local August 31, 2021 15:10 UTC