Childcare Provider's Statement
Adult vaccination coercement in kindergarten: a policy without evidence and without logic
As you have noticed, for some weeks now we have been forced to apply the “3G” rule on our premises for parental presence that goes beyond the mere dropping off and picking up of children. This means that as a parent you will have to be either “geimpft” (vaccinated), “genesen” (recovered) or “getested” (tested). This rule affects in particular the events of our family centres, but also parents’ evenings and parents accompanying their children during the settling-in period.
These rules and regulations lack any scientific evidence from the perspective of rainbowtrekkers. Furthermore, they do not contribute to the protection of hygiene in day-care centres. In our view, their only purpose is political and consists in increasing the pressure on the unvaccinated. The “3G” rules have recently been implemented in our centres – but only because, according to our legal advice, there is no legally secure way not to do so.
We shall not be divided! (photo source: istockphoto.com)
The implementation of “3G” in day care centres is not an evidence-based measure, because it has been known for a long time that day care centres are not hotspots of the pandemic. We are not aware of a single case from our facilities or from the day-care centres of other providers in which a super-spreading event, e.g., at a parents’ evening or during the settling-in period, was triggered by untested parents, which would justify fundamental rights restrictions on such a scale as now caused by 3G. The causal proof that only one less Corona patient will die in old people’s homes if “3G” applies in day-care centres is therefore yet to be provided.
Rather, it is the case that the hygiene concepts developed by day-care providers nationwide since the beginning of the pandemic have worked well in the day-care centres and have been able to sustainably prevent larger outbreak events – also of the delta variant. From a logical point of view, there is therefore no reason to tighten the existing measures through “3G” – especially because it is known, based in no small part on studies from Israel, that even vaccinated persons can continue to infect other people with the Sars-Cov-2 virus and that the viral load in vaccinated persons who carry the Sars-Cov-2 virus can even be many times higher than that of unvaccinated persons.
Because neither evidence nor logic is good enough to justify the “3G” measures, we can only assume political motivation. According to the recently revised “Corona Care Ordinance NRW”, we as day-care providers have to exclude parents from participating in our services if they do not want to be treated with one of the novel Corona vaccines and are not willing to submit to a stigmatising ideology according to which they have to “test themselves to freedom” in order to prove that they are not a danger to others. Such state encroachment against responsible citizens no longer has anything to do with health protection, but only with fear of losing face and having to admit that one has lost one’s way politically.
For pedagogical reasons, we see the role of “untested” parents in particular weakened when their children witness how their parents, as members of a minority of the non-vaccinated, are de facto systematically and permanently excluded from social participation.
We consider this guideline and the image of humanity on which it is based to be ethically and pedagogically flawed and distance ourselves from it. We will implement these guidelines because we are legally forced to do so. But we consider them a dangerous step towards a totalitarian state in which civil and children’s rights are only on paper, which divides society and endangers the free future of our children.
For many of us, the preamble to our Basic Law, which is an adapted version of the US Declaration of Independence, is the spirit in which we were raised and educated – namely, that every human being is made in God’s image and dignity, and that this dignity and worth confer on him inalienable rights which he does not have to earn, and which cannot be taken away from him. Unfortunately, for the past year and a half we have been experiencing how, in times of fear and hysteria, some basic human convictions that were believed to be safe have been shaken.
It fills us with sadness and shame that state measures in the form of regulations make us day-care centres the deputy sheriffs of a Corona policy and force us to discriminate between the “tested” and the “untested” in our parenthood. What will be the next criterion? “2G”? “1G”? Skin colour? Religion? Blood group? Where shall this all lead?
We very much hope that society will soon find its way back to a form of togetherness that once again values our differences and recognises them as a strength, and that it will be a role model for our children to include rather than divide. We very much hope that we will all soon see our fellow human beings not as viruses and either as fellow travellers or outsiders, but as the human face of a God of love and freedom.
Joel Mertens
rainbowtrekkers Kita gGmbH
CEO
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