How well the vaccines actually work

On the Robert Koch Institute's communication on vaccine efficacy.

A masked woman at the Brandenburg gate. Photo: Shutterstock

Germany is vaccinating its population against a virus that doesn’t exist anymore.

The vaccines that are being used were developed to tackle the so-called ‘wild-type’ (with emphasis on the word wild) that was first located just down the road from the world’s leading research laboratory on bat-based coronaviruses.

That virus has disappeared, though. It was first replaced by the Alpha variant, which was then pushed from its perch by the more infectious Delta variant. According to the latest weekly report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), “in Germany, as well as in other European countries, practically all infections are caused by the Delta variant.” [my emphasis]

So, if Germans are looking for reliable information on the efficacy of vaccines, one would expect that the RKI would give them information for efficacy against the strain of the virus which almost all Germans are currently being infected with.