Heroes to zeros: how German perfectionism wrecked its Covid vaccine drive
The same thoroughness that made Angela Merkel's government a pandemic role model is now holding it back
In December, two weeks before the European Medicines Agency authorised the first vaccine against Covid-19 for use across the European Union, Berlin unveiled a plan to rocket-fuel its immunisation drive with German precision engineering. Jabs would be mass-administered in purpose-built vaccination centres where patients could be shuttled through queuing lanes like cars through a car wash.
A Lego display demonstrating the complex system's efficiency impressed journalists at a press launch, but set off alarm bells in the head of Janosch Dahmen, a former doctor turned Green party MP. It all looked very logical in theory," says Dahmen, who worked on the pandemic frontline until November. But looking at it as a doctor, I thought: that's not how vaccinations work in practice.
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