The latest wave of covid-19 is harrowing German-speaking countries

“IT IS TERRIFYING, all the arguments and measures to persuade the unvaccinated to get the jab are simply ignored,” said Manfred Güllner, head of Forsa, a German pollster. The cause of his consternation? In a recent Forsa survey, 65% of the 3,048 unvaccinated Germans polled said they would “definitely” not get a covid-19 jab in the next two months. A further 23% were inclined not to.Germany, Austria and Switzerland have the highest shares of unvaccinated people in western Europe, bar tiny Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. Most of their hold-outs vote for populist, far-right parties. In Germany, for example, around 50% of those polled by Forsa voted for the AfD, a far-right party particularly popular in the east; 15% cast their vote either for Die Basis, the political arm of the , the movement opposing all measures to contain the covid-19 pandemic (the picture shows a rally). Saxony, the eastern state where the AfD is strongest, has Germany’s lowest vaccination rate, just 57.5%, and its highest infection rate.