COVID and ethics: Germany debates freedoms for the vaccinated
Ethical questions on how to treat individuals presumed immune to COVID have accompanied the pandemic from early on. Now, as Germans urgently want to resume their normal lives the debate has intensified.
It will be months before a majority of Germans will have had a chance to be vaccinated
As Germany finds itself in the throes of the third wave of coronavirus infections, people are getting tired of restrictions. So the country is debating whether fully vaccinated people should be exempt.
The government s position on what it terms freedoms ( Freiheiten ) for vaccinated individuals has evolved over time as vaccine supply has increased and the scientific data regarding the potential infectiousness of fully vaccinated individuals has grown.