Corona pandemic in Poland: restless anti-vaccination opponents in the mountains

After a lively start, the pace of the vaccination campaign in Poland is ebbing. Resistance is particularly high in the mountain regions. Now the church is trying to convince the people there of the need.

It was probably not easy for the reporters from the private broadcaster TVN to find someone up in the Polish mountains who was vaccinated against Corona. Waiter Stanislaw It is good, but he seems a little embarrassed. “We do not talk about it, it is a taboo subject whether you are vaccinated. Some are also ashamed to say that in front of the vaccine opponents so that they do not call you a fool,” he says.

Poland’s vaccination campaign has a problem. Stars and starlets advertise vaccinations, but those who oppose vaccinations, who warn of possible infertility through vaccination without proof, often penetrate more, and in the tourist regions of the Carpathian Mountains, of all places, the skeptics are the spokesmen.

“Risk of vaccination much greater”

Sebastian Piton is particularly present, he wears a beard, long hair, wide dark shirts and the black hat of the mountain dwellers, and he has the convincing aura of a person who wants to see through everything.

“We are of the opinion that the vaccine is harmful. I am proud that most of us here are skeptical of these quasi-compulsory vaccinations,” he says. “We estimate the risk of vaccination to be much greater, we already have basic immunity – and if it were a dangerous disease, we would all be killed.”

Ten thousand Poles died, but not on the street, but in the hospital or at home. There are officially 75,000 corona deaths in Poland, even more deaths result from excess mortality, which is one of the highest in Europe over the entire course of the epidemic.

Protest strongholds in the mountains

But in the mountains there was already one of the largest protest and refusal movements against the lockdown, and now protest in the form of collective refusal to vaccinate. Hard bread for Jerzy Toczek, vaccination coordinator in Zakopane, the capital of the Carpathians.

“Opponents of vaccines are very active all over Poland, but in Podhale County they are finding particularly fertile soil.” The people in the mountains think they are strong, he says. True to the motto. “I grew up up here, how can I get sick with Covid?” And thirdly, it is untruthfully spread that the vaccines are unsafe and not adequately researched.

Even the church was switched on, and in some places clergymen shouted on megaphones to get vaccinated on the spot – many people in the mountains are religious.

Please to the bishops

“For many people the clergy can be an authority who can talk about the good effects of vaccines. If we want as many as possible to return to the churches, we have to do everything possible to have as many as possible vaccinated,” says Lukasz Kmita Voivode of Lesser Poland. He had therefore asked the bishops to read out an appeal in the churches, and most were benevolent, unfortunately not all.

After a lively start, the number of vaccinations in Poland is now increasing more slowly. Most recently, according to statistics, only 44 percent of Poles were fully vaccinated, in Germany almost every second. Because in surveys up to 20 percent exclude vaccination, the government allowed vaccination for children from 12 weeks ago in their need.

Are local lockdowns coming?

And while mask discipline is practiced to a large extent in large cities, it is different in the holiday resorts: In Masuria, you can tell newcomers by the fact that they still wear masks on the first day, you can hear from there. In the TVN report, the reporters called mountain hotels on a test basis. Are your staff vaccinated? Not consistently, they kept hearing. There are different opinions on vaccination, it is said.

In light of this, the government recently warned of a 4th wave triggered by Delta, perhaps as early as August. Lockdowns, it said, could be imposed locally this time, depending on the vaccination quota.