Austria's Large Control Group

The fact that 35% of the adult population in Austria is unvaccinated is a problem for its politicians. They describe it as shameful. However, the real problem is not that it's shameful, but that it's revealing.

Flu season is upon us, and we are seeing spikes in cases everywhere. Everybody will soon know somebody who've caught the virus. In countries where hardly anyone is vaccinated, politicians can blame the low vaccination rate for the spike in cases. In countries where just about everyone is vaccinated, politicians can claim that things would have been worse without the vaccine. However, in countries like Austria, where people are split into two similar sized groups, everyone will be able to see for themselves who gets ill and who doesn't.

It will be very hard to make it look like the vaccine works when people see evidence to the contrary in their daily lives, and that's the most likely real reason why politicians are panicking in Austria.

They locked down the unvaccinated. But that didn't stop the latest spike in cases. It merely made it all the more evident that the vaccines don't work.

Realizing their mistake, they decided to lock down the vaccinated as well, but only in places where cases are especially high. However, the highest case counts are in areas with the highest vaccination rates, so this too is likely to backfire.

This winter looks likely to be especially severe when it comes to virus cases, and it will become evident everywhere that the vaccines don't work. But this realization will first dawn on people in places like Austria, and that's bad news for Austria's vaccine pushing politicians.

Eva Maria Holzleitner

By SPÖ Presse und Kommunikation - Tagung SPÖ Parlamentsklub, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link