Opinion: Serious omissions concerning the coronavirus

The issue of confronting the disease has now clearly gone astray. The cases are multiplying, the health system has exhausted its limits, the intubated in intensive care beds and the dead are surpassing all previous numbers and the complex anti-vaccination movement prevents the expansion of vaccination which is the only solution to the problem.

Under the pressure of the deteriorating situation, the government is reacting awkwardly and spasmodically as it categorically rejects a new lockdown that would again paralyze the economy and deplete the remaining public resources. But it is also obvious that it is acting in terms of avoiding political costs.

We humbly think that the first serious omission of the government is that it has not confronted the growing claim that compulsory vaccination is unconstitutional. Thus, thousands of vaccine deniers declare themselves constitutionalists, citing unconstitutionality in compulsory vaccination. The issue from very early on could have been radically addressed with a relevant appeal to the Council of State. An opinion that there is no question of unconstitutionality would shock all those who refer to the Constitution, the vast majority of whom probably have no idea what it is and of course have never read it. In fact, many people probably think that it is Syntagma (Constitution) Square. In any case, the leading scholar among Greek constitutionalists, Professor Nikos Alivizatos, voluntarily voiced his opinion and stated in the most categorical way: compulsory vaccination is not unconstitutional and those who support it are both ignorant, and are lying, and therefore what they are doing by spreading false news is wrong. Beyond what should have been clarified with a Council opinion

Many of the individual government measures are incomplete to ineffective. A glaring example is the correct ban on entering restaurants where customers are unvaccinated, but for unexplained reasons it is not obligatory for the staff of these stores to be vaccinated. Thus cooks and waiters carrying the virus are allowed to spread the disease to their customers without hindrance.

It is also inexplicable why the army does not have to be vaccinated. Especially the infantry. In fact, when it is known that new recruits are required to undergo some other vaccinations.

It was also rightly argued that the ASEP competitions for state employment should not be attended by unvaccinated people. But those newly appointed to the State mechanism should also present a vaccination certificate. Why don’t all these newly recruited hospital staff, police, firefighters and general public sector employees need to be vaccinated? Besides, the relevant prompt for vaccination should be less polite and with terminology understood by the broad strata of the semi-educated or illiterate Greeks. The Italians display the coffins that come out of the hospitals with coronavirus dead every day. Thus the warning about the consequences of the coronavirus is harsher but more effective. You will die if you are not vaccinated and not you will expire, as the media often say to the normally semi-educated Greeks, who do not know what is implied by the verb “expire”. These few musings, due to lack of space.