People who didn’t get vaccinated against Covid lost all confidence in Dutch government

People who decided not to get vaccinated against the coronavirus lost all confidence in the Dutch government during the pandemic. Over 90 percent still don’t have that confidence back, Nederlands Dagblad reported.

The newspaper interviewed 20 people who decided not to get the Covid-19 jabs to mark the third anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the Netherlands. Three years ago today, a man in Loon op Zand became the first confirmed Covid-19 patient in the Netherlands.

According to the newspaper, unvaccinated people still can’t get over the level of incomprehension they faced from the government and Dutch society as a whole about their decision on what to put in their own bodies. “We were demonized as wappie or self-centered,” one said. “Wappie” is traditionally a Frisian name, but came to refer to someone who knowingly breaks the coronavirus rules during the lockdowns.

The unvaccinated people feel the government focused too much on vaccination being the only way out of the pandemic. And that led to a dichotomy in society that made them the bad guys.

The use of the coronavirus access pass when larger events were first allowed again also made unvaccinated people feel like second-class citizens. The coronavirus access pass only allowed access to large events to people who got vaccinated against Covid-19, recently tested negative for the coronavirus, or could prove they recently recovered from it and therefore had built up immunity.