Health min: It’s warped to be anti-vax and ignore Covid measures

Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said he finds it incomprehensible that some people oppose coronavirus measure while, at the same time, do not want to be vaccinated. According to the health minister, vaccination is the only way out of the crisis.

“People who do not want to be vaccinated also do not want to go back to the coronavirus measures. But they make the way out of the crisis with vaccination very difficult. That is strange. Both is not possible”, De Jonge said in an interview with NU.nl.

“There something decadent about thinking that you can give do away with the only means that will get us out of the crisis but at the same time count on the solidarity and the protection of other who do get vaccinated”, the health minister stated.

De Jonge said he understands that people are getting fed up with the measures, “A kind of pandemic fatigue has come up. A kind of anger out of helplessness. I can understand that.”

“What I can’t understand is that you don’t want to contribute to reducing that nasty virus by getting vaccinated and at the same time you don’t want to adhere to the measures”, De Jonge continued.

The health minister said he is concerned about conspiracy theories that are circulating on social media. De Jonge said he often debated if he should react to the stories on social media “Do I let myself in and negate the nonsense, or do I ignore it to avoid giving them a podium? That is truly a dilemma every time.”

The health minister said that he had to hold back on sending out tweets when he heard the same stories in the Tweede Kamer. “You hear the same fictictious stories in the Tweede Kamer. That is not some dark room on the internet but our national assembly. I didn’t send out a lot of tweets. I typed them and deleted them again", De Jonge admitted.

"It underlines the complexity of our work", the health minister concluded.